Afterimage
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: The body of Senator Naberrie never made it to Naboo, seized en route by the newly minted Imperial fleet. With all vows broken save one, Vader intends to collect upon the very debt that swayed him to the Dark Side and uncover the power Darth Plagueis once knew. This is the cautionary tale of Padme's second life.
1. Commencement

NOTES: Originally posted elsewhere 2-3-2016. I do actually write stories about things other than people coming back from the dead. It's not my fault Uncle George practically wrote an engraved invitation. ;-) My apologies for the FF.N formatting. As always, any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated, and cause me to make embarrassing noises you thankfully don't have to hear.

* * *

 _ **Afterimage 1/?**  
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory (garnettrees)_

* * *

 _"He was as much himself again as he ever would be, and yet that 'self' would never be the same again for now he knew the meaning of fear as it defines itself in its most violent form, that is, fear of the death of the beloved, or the loss of the beloved, the loss of love."_  
-Angela Carter, Nights At the Circus

 _"It is natural that a dead man's scream should give horror, for it is obviously not a pleasing or ordinary occurrence."_  
-H.P. Lovecraft, "Hebert West: Reanimator"

* * *

No memories present themselves when awareness comes to her, and even fewer impressions follow her out of the depths from which she is expelled. All is blank; not darkness, but absence- the color of 'no more', of 'not'. She does not even think in words, for none are at her disposal. Abstract patterns of sentience linger; so she understands that she is a singular conscious entity, and that her state of being is now suddenly radically different from whatever came  
 _(a lifetime, a moment, a deathless heartbeat)_  
before.

With this new perception carries an agony that is intense but directionless. She cannot identify the source or imagine what form relief would take, and so the pain just _is_. Concrete, immutable. Omnipresent. What has changed is her perception, which now registers light and temperature where once existed something diametrically opposed, but which she has also already forgotten. She has eyes, breathes air, is capable of hearing.  
The first thing to reach her ears is the sound of her own screaming.

It goes on for some time, because she cannot remember how to stop and the pain of _being_ doesn't give her much room to contemplate an answer. Her surroundings are bright, too bright, and *wrong*. Desperate, she tries to block the light; discovers she has hands, and is discomforted by this fact. There are other sounds nearby, perhaps even another mass or living creature, but she cannot be bothered with it at present. She is  
 _(alive, i am alive again)_  
not supposed to be here, must go back to what came before. Which, at least, did not include this pain.

She is stung by something; it releases in her a white wave that smothers much of the physical agony. The air itself feels heavy, lethargic, and she no longer has the energy to scream. Her hands are drawn away from her face, at which point she realizes the intolerable assault on her vision is also finished.

Words come to her at last, revealed slowly from beneath a great blankness as if they, like she, have risen from great depths. 'Darkness' is the name for the mercy on her senses. 'I' is herself, the singularity experiencing these things. She flexes the hands she can no longer see- fingers, thumbs, the muscles of the arms she had thrust up before her. All of these things have more than one sound, or set of sounds, associated with them. Some glide, some cluster together, and others have no direct equivalency or exchange. Once more, her hands fly up, this time to her skull

( _skull, navit, head, lybbkh, antor, cranium..._ )

as if to ensure this flood of multi-textured thinking has no shattered the vessel it fills.

Without her screams to rend it, the air around her produces other sounds. Dripping, humming, and something far closer, which her mind tentatively identifies as a roar.

 _(roar; being, predator, wampa, ronto, wookie, tantaun, krayt dragon...  
or thunder; xia'den, ocean, theed, waves, waterfall...)_

Groaning, she lets her fingers tangle in the mass they find ( _hair_ , that is her hair) and pull, pull as she is being torn, bowing under the pressure of words and sounds in the dark. The strange accompaniment continues- _whir, hiss; whirr, hiss_. In and out. Waves?

No. There is some other thing here with her. Pressure on her wrists brings them down and away from the pain she was trying to get lost in. Other hands, like hers but far larger and more solid.  
 _(wrists, cuffs, bracelets, binders, chains)_  
And still, that sound.

Her body- and it _is_ her body, the ambulatory notion of 'I'- is cold and wet, wrapped or entangled in some texture. She fights it, for the very air hurts her skin, and tries to think of some way to communicate this distress other than screaming. Her tongue writhes ( _shyoibe, zhbart?_ ), searching.  
The first word she says is, "Help."

"I am here," says the thing in the dark. The voice has a deep and foreign quality, full of disquiet and carnivorous loss, but it also strikes within her some faint empathetic cord. She feels it in her bones and shudders. This, at least, results in action. The other lifts her from the cold, wet surface and into its arms. Instinctively, she grasps against the form for purchase. Her companion is solid, hard, and smooth. Assuming- for no particular reason- that it is roughly similar to herself, she settles on its shoulders, for she can see nothing now in the pitch black relief.

It must see, for it moves with assurance, taking several large strides before depositing her elsewhere. The attempt to help her stand fails, but the creature is careful to provide enough support that the betrayal of her legs does not result in a fall. Her fingers cling to the oddly smooth shoulder with its regular, blunted ridges. When her arm encircles the other being's neck, she finds still another rounded edge pressing into her skin. Always, always that roaring sound, close to her ear. It's like something trapped  
( _a shell, the sound of the ocean imprisoned in a shell_ )  
yet more regular even than the tide.

"Come." It guides her to sit in a basin- quite a large one, from the trajectory of the cool tile against her back. She kicks her legs, weak though they may be, trying to free herself from the constricting material still clinging to her form. Seeing or somehow sensing this, those large hands take hold about the neck of the garment, tearing it away. Thus divested she curls inward, knees to breast, in that instinctive motion to cover oneself.

"It is well." The voice, its narrow allowance for feeling and timbre, chills the part of her beating wildly within.  
 _Dhmei_ ; her heart.

In the cavernous voids of her mind, empty halls with a growing litter of words, memory stirs weakly. Not even a ghost, but rather  
 _(a demon, a usurper; grave worm, feasting on what's left)_  
a shadow of one. Absence as observed in a mirror. The sound of this voice both attracts and repels her, like a familiar melody transposed into some outré key. To combat this notion, she physically shies away, feeling that this presence must be predatory. Masculine, as well- she is almost certain of that, though the reasoning is as unclear as her own assumption of femininity.

"You are safe," he says firmly. Though she nods and does not repulse the single finger that touches her cheek, she does not for one moment believe him.

"E1O," he calls, with no increase in volume but a definite change in tone. "Assist your mistress." It takes a moment, and the ensuing sound of pressurized gears, for her to assign meaning to these words and realize he is addressing someone else. Some _thing_ else, for her initial perception of only one other presence is indeed correct. At his command, the lights return in far more subdued degrees. It is more like  
( _fire; the glow of the lava made things change color, for *surely*..._ )  
candlelight, or the gas-globes of-

The thought is gone, slipping through her mental grip with nary a ripple in its wake. She lets it go, gladly, glancing up at the mechanized servant- robot- only briefly. There is another word for these beings which are not organically animate, but she is too exhausted and overwhelmed to search for it. It is silver, with blue glowing bulbs set into its vague suggestion of a face.

"Lean forward, please," it says with a pleasant but inflectionless voice. The pitch is not obviously gendered, though it edges towards the feminine and makes her faintly nervous. It seems too obvious an effort to soothe, and she frowns at the cynicism of the thought.

Craning her neck a little, she tries to peer over the rim of the large cistern in which she has found herself. The droid (' _that's_ the word, she thinks, and is unaccountably pleased) picks its many-angled digits through her locks, combing a mass of dark hair that tumbles in wet, clinging tendrils well past her waist. She cannot see her erstwhile guardian, though his presence is obvious from the continued hiss and intake.  
'Breathing,' she thinks, wondering why she didn't realize it sooner. It's so painfully regular, though! Not the slightest variation as it cycles through, so heavy and ponderous as to deny the very concept of interruption.

Staring down into the bottom of the basin, she makes another unpleasant discovery. The wetness she had previously registered on her skin is also viscous, and faintly blue. Almost as soon as she begins testing the texture with her fingers, the droid- Ee-One-Oh - begins gently rinsing her down with the stream from a length of hose. All of these things- the bright light, the tile, the strange smells, and actions of the droid- give her the strong if unformed impression of palliative care. Is she ill, the tenant of some hospital? The blue substance (gel... bacta?) comes off easily enough, collecting in small globules at her feet before being pulled down the drain. The warm water feels good as it sluices against her skin, but the sensation is still overwhelming.

The knowledge that all of this input was nonexistent, even impossible, a very short time ago fills her with vertiginous alarm. Awareness _hurts_ , it is... foreign. She is certain, in that superstitious sub-language of ineffable strangeness, that she never _stopped_ existing, but knows also she has agonizingly changed (resumed?) form. The feeling is intensely oppressive, making her watchful, as one who is simultaneously guilty and unjustly pursued. Pitching forward so quickly that even the droid makes a sound of alarm, she catches herself on both palms and retches. There's nothing to expel save a little of the faint blue morass, which must have crept into her lungs and stomach. The feel of it in her mouth is so unwholesome that she moans after spitting it out. The droid, having remained still, tilts the spray a little so it continues to trickle through her hair. One or two white objects circle the drain, so small she's impressed when she's able to pluck one up before it disappears.

Marble pale, petaled. A flower, which some odd chain of association reminds her can also be called 'phaa'. Her thoughts are not entirely articulate yet, despite the increasing vocabulary at her disposal. Many of these myriad words seem prone to clump together, though she is not certain she has matched like with like. Languages- many of them, creating a constant background hum which almost blots out the other, obscurely dangerous rhythm.

Almost- but not entirely.

The flower distresses her, though she form no concrete association. With a little cry, she flings it away, and instantly hears _him_ come closer. Despite her earlier efforts to catch a glimpse of her only companion, every instinct now tells her to look down. She turns her head towards at him only when a large, black hand places itself once more on her shoulder.  
It is only some deep core of willfulness- stubbornly reformed into reticence- that prevents her from crying out again.

He is towering, enormous; as overwhelming as his essential presence betrayed, even in the dark. Perhaps he was even larger there, being a constituent of that remorseless void. A being carved of ebony, armored entirely with no flesh to be seen; all ferociously polished shoulders, breast-plate, and helmet. The eyes are darkness, too; convex and set into something so starkly representative of a skull that it is terrifying in its very artifice. She makes certain her own shudder of fear is entirely internal, for it seems her initial impression was correct. A predator, indeed- and of the most erudite order. Not as large- and certainly not as slavering- as those of the wild, but never the less a creature at the apex of any given hierarchy. Coiled, waiting, with an agile practicality and a seamless cunning. A chameleon of danger, possessed of too many angles and avenues of attack.

She stares at the arm- with its integument of tiny, pressure-sealed mail- extended towards, her, and the ponderous hand against her own pale skin. The droid emits a high-pitched squeak when he bats it entirely out of the way, but every action towards her is deliberately cautious. He is attempting to offer comfort, she realizes at last- the purpose of the gesture would have been immediately apparent from any other creature. He, however, has not been made- _shaped_ , from blasphemous obsidian- for such things. Its incongruous, but there is some obscure kernel of truth that calls to an answering seed within herself. For a moment, she wonders if she perhaps expected some other face in particular, though her mind conjures only a  
( _fiery_ )  
monochrome blank. Surely... surely someone _else_ is here, another presence she senses hovering precarious, tenaciously refusing dismissal in a way the droid never could. The sense of this identity is powerful, though she knows instantly that breaking eye-contact to look for such a being would be very unwise.  
Her eyes prick with tears.

"What pains you?"

While her lips move easily, dredging up a sound to accompany them is a frustrating and unpleasant task. She feels the weight of it almost as some crushing force braced against her body; she understands him, recognizes that the words are all of the same subset, but is by no means certain her response would be intelligible to him. Assuming she could form one at all. Doubt stirs- did she really speak earlier, or was it only a thought amplified by her distress?

In lieu of speech, she instead spreads her hands to show their emptiness and shrugs her shoulders in a motion predating verbal expression. What can be said, at any rate? She has no particular wounds and no idea of the path that has brought her to this place. It is everything that pains her, and yet nothing concrete. _Embodiment_ is agonizing; the remorseless, abrasive slide of reality.

His only response is to brush a wet lock of hair away from her face before drawing back once more. Rather than tracking his movements -she shudderingly half-suspects he may have become one again with the darkness- she turns her attention back to the vertical, handle-like railings on the side of the tub.

The stream of warm water has ceased and, while she is still dizzy, a definite goal has formed in her mind. Small, yes, but she is discovering she dislikes being forced to inaction, even by some malady. Placing her hands on the top curvature of each rail, she flexes her fingers repeatedly until, at last, she can form a fist. Firmer, firmer now. Dragging in a deep breath, she exerts every ounce of her will. A guttural moan escapes as she hauls herself up; it sounds foreign to her own ears, calling to mind a battle cry, and an image.

 _(Two swords of polished steel, crossed protectively. A crest, a pattern on a flag. 'This,' a voice says, as a finger traces along the golden embroidery. That is the one that I want. 'Dala- for my reign name.')_

The memory seems to fall apart at even the suggestion of clarity and she lets it go, instead uttering a muted sound- part triumph, part sheer surprise- when she realizes her success. She is standing upright- legs trembling, arms braced, but she has balance. The droid emits a few high-pitched notes of terror and then floats towards her with more conciliatory beeping. A pair of its numerous appendages drape a towel carefully about her shoulders, and it wisely scuttles away when the tall, dark form returns.

"You must not strain yourself," he tells her, and she cannot help but dart a quick glare at the blank, socket-like eyes of the mask. She will stand if she wishes. The sonorous voice continues, "You may be weak for some time."

Is that a statement, or a response to her displeasure? She cannot tell, there is so little inflection. When she begins attempting-somewhat clumsily- to dry herself with the cloth, he does not take it from her, instead slipping an indomitable arm around her waist for support. The gesture is at once oddly fluid and completely jarring; the motion and the creature are incompatible. Desperate to maintain this small foothold (indeed, it seems verticality is exhausting), she avails herself of the aid, trusting it no more or less than the rail. With his free hand, he holds out a covered cup, and she sees also that some other material is folded over his arm. At first, she drinks what he's given her greedily, but slows as the repellant not-taste of the thick liquid finally registers. It does soothe her throat, however, and she murmurs experimentally to herself. The droid, giving its shadowy master wide berth, flits over briefly to take the towel and cup.

Because he makes no issue of her nudity, she follows suit, though her hand creeps down once or twice to find the flat surface of her stomach. The action feels habitual but- like so much else- flees the moment she tries to examine it. Her legs are only slightly more cooperative than her mind, functioning only under protest, and he will not release her until she has both hands back on the rails. Combing through the seemingly endless tangle of sounds ringing their distant associations and muscle-memories in her throbbing head, she locates something she hopes she can express. And that he will understand.

"Th-" she swallows hard to clear her weak throat, but manages, "K. Y'h."

In this, at least, it seems her judgement is sound. After a moment of motionlessness punctuated only by the cycle of his breathing, that dark voice intones, "Do not thank me."

While not angry, there is a sharpness and a sense of... withdrawal to the statement that makes her tilt her head questioningly. Those polished, blank eyes of ebony reflect back at her two dark twins, miniatures which seem surprisingly clear. It wets her curiosity considerably- indeed, will her own face even be familiar?- but she shrinks from the idea of examining her image in its current medium. A... (she fumbles, breathes once sharply in victory) glass, a _mirror_ , may warp, but at least it betrays where it lacks objectivity. To be seen through him before she sees herself, however...

The shudder that wracks her form next is powerful, a cord of multiple discomforts. Her current contemplations, the powerful angles of reality, and a third thing- the last so paltry and elemental she almost laughs at herself. She is cold. Physically cold; something she did not know was separate from the chill of _self_ until this body- her body- reminded her.

Flesh and sinew have their own histories, imprints of repeated action and half-conscious habit. The instinct to combat the cold by embracing herself is exactly that, but it proves to be more than her precarious balance can tolerate. She does manage to right herself this time, shrugging away the assisting hand with an imperiousness she recognizes only after the fact. The apologetic look she turns on her companion seems equally lost in the great expanse carved non-expression. Light as it travels, unimpeded yet also unheeded, through the absolute voice of space. Yet she can feel the weight of his gaze on her, and cannot help but search for some sign, some cue to interpret in that obsidian  
 _(death god)_  
idol's face.

The maelstrom of words and ideas battering her mind is strong but she knows, in that same manner of bodily memory, that they are not quite the most important facet of communication. The most obvious, yes; she can feel her own thoughts gaining clarity and definition as she utilizes them even within. The sounds and symbols trap each flicker of impulse and feeling, like bottled lightning, making it possible to organize experience. Yet a glance, a quirk of the lips, the creased brow, or minute shift in stance- these she knows, before she can wield words or even understand herself, are key. It is the language of the unspoken, and what it conveys can be as mercurial as the emotions behind it.

 _('And as traitorous,' whispers something less than a voice. A catechism, repeated over and over by many different tones. 'Beware those who would read your heart by your face.')_

Her own face feels slack, strange, as she turns her gaze inward to follow half-impressions of white powder, a careful slash of red, and hours practicing the affectation of serenity, if not serenity itself. They mean nothing; disconnected pieces that imply only a shameful lack of composure in some final confrontation... things she should have said, should have done...  
All of this, lost in a liquid blaze.

She must be sorely out of practice at inscrutability, for he sees something in her face while she has only the stiffening of his posture to go by. How is it he appears even more angular than before?

"What is it you remember?" he intones, allowing no possibility for refusal.

Stubbornly, she gestures at the cloth still held folded over his arm. She is cold, yes, but he is watching her also- avid to the point of palpability. The cover she wants is less for chill or embarrassment than it is simply because she does not wish to feel that gaze pressing against her flesh.

For a long moment, he stares at her with not the slightest tilt of helmet or flex of gauntleted hand. She jerks her chin up, motions again while clinging desperately to the railing with her other hand.

A sound issues forth over the dirge metronome of his breathing, taking her aback. It will be some time before she learns to recognize the sound for what it is; his only means, truncated divorced from common understanding, of indicating amusement. Just an irregular explosion of sound- not even a mangled chuckle so much as a bark of surprise. For now, she must set it aside with all the other mysterious details she has so far encountered. Besides, the sound is quickly followed by something more unfathomable still.

"Yes, my lady," says the tomb caryatid. He hold the garment- a robe of heavy, crushed and shimmering fabric- out to her, settling it about her shoulders so she might shrug into it with out losing her balance. "My apologies. I did not intend to make you uncomfortable."

Uncertain but having received her request, she attempts to complete the trade with the first words that come to mind. " _Nihilam; nihilfit._ " Nothing; too much. " _ **Fire**_."

Her lips shape the words easily enough. It is volume she lacks, a force to propel her sentiments into the void between them. One of these words is not suited to its companions, but she cannot quite be troubled to determine the outlier. At any rate, he may be possessed of just as many conflicting sounds and meanings as she is. For a moment, despite the terror of his form, she envies him his solidity, his definition. She has only

 _(just returned)_

recently woken, consciousness wending through her body like thick, milky mist. A drapery over a peerless river, obscuring jewel-toned carnival lights until they look like the haloed ancestors in the high ceilings of... No, her mind is torpid, dark waters too thick to form waves. It will have no part in steady reflection. She sways a little, lets such vague impressions flee in favor of righting herself. Whether he understanding everything or not, her shadowy companion reads her body language with ease.

"Come," he says, and puts frighteningly powerful hands upon her waist to lift her out of the basin. She braces her hands against his shoulders automatically and, when her feet touch the floor, resists his attempts to do anything other than place a supporting arm under her own. Her feet are bare against this new surface which- aside from being cold- is smooth and metallic, offering little in the way of purchase. Still, she will walk while she can manage, though she already knows her remaining endurance is insufficient to avoid denting her pride.

'Am I a prideful person, then?' she wonders, finding no edges by which to match this notion to memory- no way to prove or disprove. She knows, however, that she will do as much as she can for herself. Anything else seems... unwise. It's a feeling hardly limited to her strange comrade. Once more, she thinks of sentient expression, and how the eye instinctively strives to divine the motivations behind it.

He bids the door open with an imperious wave of his hand, resulting in a relentless cascade of light so intense she flinches instinctively away, towards him, trying to hide her face. Closer, closer; he shields her with his cape, and she catches a hint of his true scent. Armorial, unsurprisingly- metallic, but also ruthlessly clean, and faintly coppery

 _(red, as when they tell you to bite your tongue; reds as robes of state, or that which spills forth upon the battlefield)_

despite all that. She blinks furiously, marveling a little at his silent unmoving patience. At last, the illumination ins't quite as painful and, at her vague but affirmative murmur, they begin moving down the long gray hall. The droid hovers a respectful distance behind them, apparently cowed into silence by its master's earlier displeasure.

There are few doors to mark the corridor's lateral terrain. Few seams exist, even in the walls of concrete, durasteel, or... there is something else, some other alternative that brings to the hum of engines and the memory of waves, but the associations refuse to connect. She's tapping the dregs of her reserves now, mind foundering, and knows she must ration accordingly. Having found no point of reference for the eye, she concentrates her gaze on her own feet, cautiously planning each step. If her willfulness annoys or inconveniences the other, he says nothing, his own invariable ocean roar trailing behind them as surely as his cape. She cannot escape the sight of his boots beside her own bare toes- and they are not boots, once the eye has more than a moment for study. The appendages were cast as such, certainly, but even the most clever of molds cannot duplicate the true depth of buckles and layers of leather encasing flesh and blood. Those _are_ his legs, bare but inviolate. He might walk

 _(through fire, the terrible choking fire that composes sea and sky)_

over hot coals and not notice.

Though she falters not in the slightest, she is struck once more by the fear that she is, in fact, the only form of organic sentience in... whatever environment this may be. There's a stark terror in that notion, held at bay by the persistence of instinct. Her dark guardian is a _made_ thing- that is becoming increasingly clear- but that does not necessarily preclude being alive. The constituent parts...

She does stumble now, her already recalcitrant legs giving violent protest at last. Quick on the heels of embarrassment comes a deep sense of torpidity and dismay- almost despair. Each passing moment feels like crushed glass scraping against her skin. As if the passage of time has been so alien to her previously that she now feels it as an affront to her senses. Even without clear memory, languages and vocabulary in horrendous disarray, she knows this is unnatural. What if such agony is part of this new place, if it never stops? All at once, the only solution seems to involve laying down on the cold

( _stone walkways in a stone necropolis_ )

floor. A marionette, robbed of impetus, just a wet bundle of hair and dark

 _(she cannot even remember the name of the rich color now. how useless!)_

robe. Curled in this heap, she will simply wait and hope for a reversion to her previous state.

The will in her, finely wrought but strong, responds sluggishly. Vehement, yes, but not quite as quick as her companion, who swiftly scoops her up with a decisive lack of comment. Articulate silence (or _near_ silence); ' _you've had your way, now I'll have mine_ '. The fluidity of motion clearly shows how little effort it costs him. He holds her against his armored chest as if she weighs nothing. Maybe that's true- she certainly feels weightless, or perhaps merely light-headed. Her awkward relation to- and reluctance to look at- his automaton's face leaves her staring at the metal chains which serve as a clasp for his cloak and the few indicator lights against which her own body is pressed. She counts these, studies their shape to banish the sense of both disorientation and her own passivity.

 _('Singular focus,' some diffuse memory advises her now. An older woman's voice- not stern, but possessed of expectations. 'Pick a spot, anchor your gaze. It will decrease the dizziness. Begin again.)_

'I already have done,' she thinks, rather incoherently. 'I am tired, no more.' Nausea fills her- or rather, the direct opposite of ravenous hunger, with its insistence on survival. While no noise escapes that she is aware of, the shadow creature seems to sense her distress. Rather than voicing an inquiry, he merely increases his pace, moving one gauntleted hand to shield her eyes. He strides his impossibly long strides down the hall; he carries her, he breathes. How _exhausting_ that must be! Every living thing breathes, of course, but to be so aware of it... She finds herself fighting to force some syncopation into her own respiration, it avoid matching that dreadful regularity.

At last, they reach a door whose opening hiss at least provides some punctuation beyond the constant respiratory tide. He's shortened their journey considerably; he must cross whole wastelands with no more than a few strides. The light within is perhaps as bright as the hall, but more diffuse. It has a roseate glow, issuing as it does from two pairs of crystalline spheres, held out from either wall by by thick candelabrum stems and very clearly out of place. The rest of this cubist's paradise- or what little she's seen of it- is far too pragmatic to tolerate even this small luxury. It repudiates delicate lighting and smooth curves, though both are clearly in evidence.

There is little in the room itself; sway-backed chair, table, a seemingly endless phalanx of monitors against the the far wall, and a bed set niche-style into the bulkhead. All the edges are rounded in way that brings to her mind a medicinal, recuperative function- mindful of the dangers in merely walking, in getting out of bed. Though it spares her eyes, the rosy glow does little to actually soothe, suggesting cavernous depths to the room, rather than making the space seem intimate or welcoming.

He lays her carefully on the bed, which is the only other object in the room with any true distinguishing marks. Piled high with thick blankets and furs, it embraces her with an enticing and lethargic indifference. She can even make out a faint pattern in the top-most monochrome quilt; small flowers with rich, over-bearing leaves. At the sight of this, she is able to recall the name of the color of her robe. 'Green', _vehm_ ; emerald, the hue of shadowy forests whose boughs shelter deeper pools. She allows herself to feel accomplishment about this, even as she frowns at her guardian. While not fussing, precisely, he does take care to ensure she's situated. It's jarring, but perhaps it is only noticeable because his form so negates compassion; the courtesy is so unexpected that it undertakes inaccurate proportions.

He stands to his full height, and she thinks she must seem to him like some exotic little curio, safely tucked in its drawer. While she cannot be certain she is holding his gaze, she is also careful not to look completely away from the mask. The air of expectancy she feels must not be solely of her imagination for, at last, he speaks again. There is a slight alteration in his stance, a shifting of weight, as if he lingers in spite of his own better judgement. It occurs to her that she may seem equally as alien and unpredictable to him, though that's difficult to imagine and doesn't feel quite right. Yet here she is, half-damp and shivering, like a being hauled ashore in a net.

He says, "Do you remember your name?"

It isn't a question, though it tries to be one right down to the upward inflection. That voice has not been made for interrogatives- indeed, for anything other than command, _demand_. Subtle loopholes in linguistics are out of the question.

' _Phaa_ ,' she thinks, recalling those disturbing, fleshy little white blossoms she'd found in her hair. 'Flower', yes; but when the sound is spoken with a different emphasis with the tone in a different range, she remembers now that it is also the word for something white and cold, not living- 'snow'. This, the tongue which comes to her most readily, is a language dedicated to vagaries of meaning.

Her fingers twitch, as if trying to trace some form she cannot quite visualize, and must achieve via instinct alone. She cannot quite follow this through, and is forced to shake her head faintly against the pillow.

"Do not concern yourself," he says, as if they are discussing a bruise or minor cut. "These things will come to you in time.

A terrifying statement. With one last phantom touch to her hair and an odd adjustment of blankets, he leaves her to contemplate these words. The droid hovers- bustles, almost- to her bedside; applying thin, circular monitoring patches to her wrists, as well as a needle and associated tube to her right arm. Clear, faintly greenish liquid begins flowing through. It's going in, not out, and she wonders vaguely if she should panic.

But no. 'In time' is such a weighted phrase, and she knows that in whatever... _else_ -place she came from, chronology was not a consideration. He won't be sending her back- something she finds unfortunate after a moment's consideration. She would not object if he did.

Her companion has busied himself with studying the monitors, ramrod-straight in his baring now that he is several arm-lengths away. Behind his void outline, flickering displays show variegated read outs, uneven bars, lines and arrays of numbers, some of which flash in red. Even when he orders Ee-One-Oh away, he does to turn back to her. Abashed, perhaps, for having tucked her in like a child? Incongruous, impossible! It may be that projecting emotions on this ambulatory monolith is only slightly more futile (not to mention more intimidating) than analyzing her own feelings.

Eyelids fluttering, she watches his shape blur. The lassitude flowing through her is winning, especially now that her fight is little more than perfunctory. All the same, she must keep him in sight. He will only be more dangerous if he is allowed to merge back into his native darkness. And besides, he is the only company she has.

The words coming to her have multiplied exponentially, concepts and descriptions begetting more more via association. It's like fleeing down the stairways of some cavernous antechamber, only to discover that they go up and sideways, and that the floor you seek may in fact be the ceiling. She has no doubt he is correct- her name will come to her in time. Soon. Even now, she can almost see the fine black strokes, two complex symbols which- by virtue of defining her- were the first she ever learned in that other time. Though still a void

 _(or rather an echo chamber, whose depths remain unknown)_

it seems more conceivable now that she does in fact have an existence to recall.

Her very flesh oppresses her; she is not sure she wants this fact of _being_ back. Still, she struggles to stay awake, and flinches when he turns back to her with needle in hand.

"You must rest," he says, seemingly having read her expression. Which is funny, because her face feels to her like frozen porcelain. She's in no state to struggle, much less stand any chance of delaying the inevitable. To distract herself, she notes the implications of the statement. Whatever she was doing before, it obviously wasn't resting. There's a little pinch; an additional, artificial calm rolls through her like veils of rain in high mountain lakes. Combined with her own exhaustion, it is too thick to resist; she is lost in it. No firm point of reference, just shadow flitting, shrouded by fog until that too is lost in darkness.

She has no idea how long she sleeps. Lightless waves lap upon lightless shores, a no-where kingdom in which all memory is- and must remain- forbidden. Distressed, she thrusts an arm out to shield herself from all this negation. Though she senses the motion echoing in the physical world, she cannot quite extricate herself from the treacherous shadow of dream.

The waves are louder now, a squall.

In the midst of this, she feels one great, ponderous hand take her own.

.

* * *

END NOTES:  
[+] As far as I know, there are no canon examples of the native language of Naboo. Of course, I haven't been exposed to the EU, so I may be wrong about that. If there's a resource out there for it, please don't hesitate to let me know. For the time being, there are words in the text intended to be Nubian/other languages Padme may have been exposed to. They should be few, with fairly obvious meanings... I hope. ^_^''


	2. Plague Journals I

NOTES: I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to comment or leave kudos- I can't tell you how encouraging it is. *crosses fingers* Here's hoping Vader's POV lives up to expectations.  
May I now present Chapter Two, in which we have some backstory, some rituals (which I will expand on later), a Tolkien reference, and a Vader who makes bad life choices no matter what name he's answering to. ^_~

* * *

 _ **Afterimage 2/?**  
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory (garnettrees)_

* * *

Darth Vader barely makes it to the hyperbaric chamber in time.

He has lingered too long, desperate to convince himself of his ultimate success. Able to tear his attention away from his prize only long enough to check the monitors, he sat loathing the sound of his own breathing because it meant he could not hear hers. Victory should be- _is_ \- undeniable; Padme is once more a being of heartbeat and life, embodied and

 _(caught)_

enmeshed in the fabric of existence. All biometric readings are holding steady, healer's cuffs monitoring the regular thumping of that sentimental organ and feeding nutrients into a body which has been

 _(starved? one cannot starve the dead...)_

held in a stasis of deprivation for more than a galactic standard year. Time, once more, has changed its character on him- it seems to move strangely now, though so many things (including light and color) have always been influenced by her presence. Every moment has been at his back until mere days ago, breathing cold lava

 _(for there comes a time when heat surpasses heat and must become its opposite, as light disperses particles into everlasting darkness)_

down a neck no longer truly possessed of nerves. This has been his eleventh hour, his last chance, but Vader himself is a creature of last chances. His eyes do not blink as they once did, so he was able to look on her quite fully, with no worry that some fault of the mind presented an illusion. The visor sees only uncompromising reality, and utterly fails to diminish her. He could not bear to touch her, once the adrenaline of immediate action faded, fearing his approach would only wake her with its irrepressible noise.

And yet...

He motioned continually to E1-OH with a hand that felt heavy, clumsy. _Again, check again_. The droid, incapable of surprise or judgement, obeyed each time. It did not remind him of what the monitors so readily display, or of the data feed so easily accessible through his own visual systems. It did not point out that he has worked tirelessly on the micro-servos and neuro-impluse simulators in his newly cast hand to ensure it can out-perform the fine-motor detail of the one it replaced. That effort was tire _some_ , in may ways- he had years of tinkering with the left only to find himself forced to mirror those steps with the right, and the latter was always his dominant grip. Gone are the days when he crushed mundane objects unintentionally, when he was dependent on the grossly imprecise installations of medi-droids he'd have melted down to slag if he could.

(He can't. He crushed them all unconsciously upon hearing that **she**...)

No. That is over and done with now. He may look upon the evidence, if not with his own eyes than with as close a facsimile as can be attained for now. He had no wish to leave the room for even a moment, and he holds her image carefully in his mind's eye. Present, a mere arm's length away; Padme resting, hair damp and curling on the white linen, one hand flung up beside her head in repose. He remembers her shielding her eyes on a Coruscant day- all of which where bright, the city planet all burnished metal gleaming- watching him land with a party of other luckless front-liners on leave. Trying to pick him out from a distance. Or is she wielding something off? Her palm facing out to block an expression of fear which, even Padme was willing to admit, is something you must never let the enemy see.

Best not to speculate. She might have been shielding herself from some dream's intense heat.

 _('What is it you remember?'  
' **Fire**.')_

And what of that other sound, which came before he strained to assure himself that air passed between those lips? What of the _scream_ (if it may be called so prosaic a thing) which even now echoes over the roar which is his endless and constant companion? The sounds of torture, the death-agonies of even those traditionally made exempt from slaughter, no longer move him at all. Yet he was always more... attuned to any slight against her, no matter how often she reminded him- in both word and deed- that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. A man looking to violate the natural order of the universe should, perhaps, not be so surprised at what lay beyond forbidden gates, but no words or expectations could conceptualize what he'd heard. To speak of 'death throes' is common. Was it _life-throes_ he witnessed as she lay on the table in her funerary gown, soaked in the bacta which had been his last ditch effort to buy more time? It's insertion into the preservation casket had been risky in and of itself, and ensuring her breathing passages were clear had added more complexity to a endeavor of already immense occult detail. He'd had no choice, and fears now he may have pained her

 _(again, again, for she could not scream that first time, oh no)_

deeply and needlessly. Damaged her in some way that will cost him everything once more. He'd searched her face, absorbing the essential anima she seemed to radiate even in repose. A sigh, a movement of eyes beneath delicate lids, a slight frown; he had never been able to pretend she was sleeping, before.

He dallied, insisted to himself that in another moment, perhaps two... then he would leave her side. Padme will not, he reassures himself presently, slip once more behind the obscuring veil from which he has so painfully freed her. It is only physical limitation that eventually forces his hand, for seventy-two cycles have passed since he took up this incomparable task, and that which resisted her release did so in the utmost measure. But her heartbeat is steady, respiration typical of rest, proteins eagerly being absorbed through the bands. The medi-sensors show no signs of neuropathic, psychogenic, or nociceptive distress, and all neural activity indicates she is experiencing delta wave sleep. The dreaming variety, unfortunately.

 _Check again._ He ordered, even as he left.

The chamber hisses closed around him in a series of three beats: atmospheric, microbial, and the final emergency fall-back. It is the same sterile medley that accompanied the opening of Padme's preservation casket- such a quiet and prosaic sound, given the task it heralded.

"Padme lives," he says again, this time aloud, in the tones granted him by the suit's vocoder. It is not a voice made for awed whispering, able only to bark and boom. Yet perhaps that is better. It is... difficult to hear her name uttered by this timbre, but the statement itself sounds more concrete. Inarguable. Only half-conscious of the movement, he sinks to his knees with a swiftness that betrays its substitution for simply falling. He may rest now, having freed her from her catafalque.

 _'So you have,'_ murmur cold desert simoons threading through the back of his mind. The floor of the chamber is a pittance- he can cross it in four strides, and it is much dominated by the chair he can not quite haul himself up to just at present. His hulking form must appear ludicrous, wedged almost in the half-bow of a Knight, though there are none under the antiseptic lights to ever see. The brilliance from above is almost overwhelming, able to cast only the most pitiful pools of shade to mock his form and, while the walls are the regulatory white of any infirmary, not a single surface gleams. Clean, of course, but utterly matte. What use has he of reflections?

 _'You have freed her,'_ the ephemeral, undeniable chill of the winds persist, _'but who can free you? You walk about in your tomb.'_

Not true- or not _quite_ true.

While the suit's biometric monitoring systems have been warning him of immanent collapse for over 40 minums- bold, floating alerts at the corners of his vision, vermillion against the omnipresent red of the visor- Vader is still too much of a mechanic to heed them, even under normal circumstances. He has suffered himself to have many masters, but the suit will not be one of them. He has pushed many machines past their endurance, driven them to performances others could only dream of. That the suit has him trapped, defines the borders of his world with physical dependencies is irrefutable, but he will give no more ground than absolutely necessary. If he himself has never been without a master, than machines have always been _his_ serfs. If he cannot bend them for this vital task, then he is not worthy of Her at all.

He is reminded, with bitter irony, of Master Yoda's 'belief' exercises, during which the diminutive master would inquire amidst the younglings as to the difference in technique when using the Force to lift a crate, versus something much larger, like a B-wing. This question always elicited imaginative- and sometimes desperately creative- answers, but provoked from certain 'presumptive' padawan only a narrowing of the eyes. How the little sage would stand there, chin resting on claws resting on cane, his aqueous eyes so calm! The question was a snare; philosophical or physical, a trap is a trap, and any slave worth his or her moisture can spot one coming a parsec away. 'No difference, there is,' was the final answer, always followed up with a lecture on 'size matters not'. Once you understood this, once you _believed_ , then everything must bow to the new order, or so said the old wizard. Metaphysical acrobatics, for which Vader has the least patience of all.

Has he not, however, believed this victory into being? He, whose constituent parts once belonged to a boy over whom so many in the Temple despaired? Their high-flung philosophy is now only a guttering flame, while Lord Vader need only summon an encrypted feed to gaze once more on desire made manifest. Any image communicated to the chamber screen is completely inaccessible to any command identifier other than that of his suit. The slightest attempt at an injection signal will cause the little infirmary to secure itself and notify him without delay. By necessity, the hyperbaric chamber remains in his shuttle while Padme is safely concealed in the bunker below, but he does not intend for this distance to remain.

Yet, having so assiduously seen to this monitoring, he now feels a curious sense of hesitancy to employ it. She rarely turned when he came into a room, particularly if they were in mixed company, but she always seemed to know he was there without looking. And he would know that she knew, seeing some slight alteration in her posture, in the atmosphere around her, or the way she carefully moved her hands to make a point. There was, Padme had said from the first, a weight to his blue gaze.

( _'Please don't look at me like that.' Sharpness sheathed in protocol, in the velvets of ritual, when really she seemed to be reproaching him for growing up._  
Instead of denying it, he pressed further. 'Why not?'  
'It makes me uncomfortable.')

Should he summon her image to the screen now, as a legendary mage conjures visions in a still pool, would she still feel that pressure, be disturbed by the palpable nature of his regard? It seems invasive to watch her that way, almost inspiring a sense of guilt, though surely his actual presence is more disruptive. Of shame, almost- though not so terrible as the self-loathing he felt when he looked down upon her earlier. She seemed so small and fragile, despite her show of imperiousness in the 'fresher. (And he had only to see that look of willfulness, of careful truce and extreme-self reliance, to know Padme has been returned to him entirely.) Her gaze had been on him, curious and evaluating even as the flush of life continued to seep slowly back into her skin. Fear and confusion showed themselves only as wariness and, of course, she had refused to see her exposure as any sort of strategic disadvantage. He knew that look of old; those changeable eyes narrowed, accessing some puzzle within.

Sprawled as he is on the painfully pristine floor of the chamber, Vader finds himself yearning for the distant, calculating tenor that so typically characterizes his thoughts these days. His mind hums with the power he has channeled, considerations for the now perilous future, and all the strange uncategorized feelings Padme herself inspires with such ease. It occurs to him that perhaps this pilfered form, this conglomerate of spare parts, is not equal to containing his own essence- not when it is ignited this way. Certainly, the hyper-oxygenated environment cannot repair or ease the damage done by channeling the Force in this manner. Under normal circumstances, Vader is in no way dependent on the chamber. Its function is restorative, of course, allowing for maintenance, healing, and the care of his remaining organic exterior. It is also more conducive to rest, though the latter isn't much of an endorsement. But he had done his best to make sure the facility is not necessary- no warrior should allow themselves to be hobbled so. He has augmented the suit to self-sustain for up to three months. Despite the appearance of the chest plate, there is no real central nexus to the system, and so any superficial (and most serious) damage does not produce a cascade effect. It is not the machine protesting Vader's exertions.

It is the remains of the man.

Leaving the visual feed aside for the moment, he merely performs another check on vital signs, intensely gratified to see they hold steady still. Padme's flesh- unspeakably lovely though it may be- has already proven unequal to the tenacity of her spirit, whilst he is more obdurate than ever. He is now even taller than she, a grotesque gift of the Emperor's emphasis on the symbolic. The suit provides only the most vague impression of the tactile, a functional sense of weight and environment. He can crush every day objects in his fist, and did so unintentionally as he was adjusting to his new form. His control and judgement are better now, but he could not bear it if he damaged her.

 _('Again,' adds the sinuous little voice, which represents nothing save the machine-born obsession with enumerating all facts. 'She clawed at her throat, she sank to her knees. She looked and said she knew you not.')_

The construction which is Vader must tower, must terrify, and there is no denying that he saw Padme tense upon catching full sight of him. Unnatural stillness, as if preventing a flinch beneath the chill of his long shadow. No accompanying look of defensiveness actually bloomed upon her face, however. Only caution, question. Dare he take this as some instinctual knowing on her part and, should she recognize some shard of her husband persists, how can he rejoice whilst at the same time purging it immediately?

He is therefore in a quandary of selfhood that would unhinge most sentient beings entirely. Vader is utterly immune to it for several reasons. First, the selfhood of any slave must be mutable, in order to hide this precious possession from (and prevent any damage by) the master. Also, unique to the foundation of his being is a capacity for will not dependent on faith or imagination. Therefore, he had commanded, _demanded_ , of the Force, 'Yield her up, give her over. She is not yours,' with an audacity only one other had dared before.

It was hardly that simple, of course, as his current state attests. Thrusting away the helmet, he unseals the upper portion of the mast and flings that away, too. Huge gulps of over-purified air are drawn past the bothersome mouth-guard; the carefully regulated temperature still stings against his thin, scarred flesh.

So the Force had not stirred, had not acknowledged, and the boiling rage of the Dark Side only pushed his goal farther away. He then applied what he had learned with vindictive care, found stillness, and _**pushed**_. The galaxy's most impatient padawan (or so Obiwan claimed) exercised infinite patience in one regard. He had practiced relentlessly for that moment with whatever material was available, having acquired quite the collection of grotesqueries over the past year. (Thus inspiring some rather gruesome rumors about his dining habits amongst Imperial officers, as well.) Each cell, every youngling knew, has a midi-chlorian; each midi-chlorian generates life. Not just organic life, Darth Plagueis' teachings held, but _essence_ \- a thousand tiny threads leading back to the opal-gold being he sought. 'She is not yours,' he had insisted, furiously calm, 'the way may be shut, but not to me. I am not the thief here.'

After steps more complex and arduous than he cares to remember at present, the Force at last had screamed. An ultra-instinctual agony that was unlike any disturbance Vader had ever encountered in the archives, let alone experienced himself. It had been wholly beyond the realm of comprehension, as if the ordinary had been altered in such a sudden yet subtle fashion that everything looked mercilessly foreign while being exactly the same. On Tatooine, there was a common saying, 'You can't get water from a stone.' For that thin sliver of a moment, the aphorism echoed in the Sith Lord's mind; paring into a rock as though it were a ripe fruit, or cutting into a breathing creature to find it was only made of leftover bread dough.

Vader's quest has been a constant balancing act of subterfuge and strategically applied truths. It was Kenobi who taught him, though not purposefully, that the best way to lie is to coat the deception in fact. He has told his new Master that he seeks power beyond that of which the Jedi could dare to dream, has demonstrated methods for prolonging physical agony via his gifts, much to Palpatine's skeletal delight. To think the Emperor would not have felt such an event such as this resurrection is the very height of lunacy. Even the dullest of sensitives would have felt that momentary skip in reality to some degree. Vader is on the barest edges of the Rishi Maze, but Sidious is strong and the apprentice's Force signature too evident in a galaxy now almost devoid of adepts.

 _(Once, a particularly nasty Dug told a young slave boy to go home, to stay off the racetrack and stick to rolling dice in Mos Espa's dusty streets. 'Off with you, meat sack,' he'd spat, 'you cannot afford to be here. Here, we play only for keeps.')_

"I know that," Vader rasps aloud presently. He must expect attack at any moment, a siege upon the mind which- supposedly- must always remain open and unvarnished before his Master. Palpatine will wait, bide a while until he thinks there has been some loosening of bulwark, a lapse of judgement in giddy relief. With an expression of distaste he is no longer aware of (indeed, he stopped in thinking terms of his own facial expressions some time ago), the Sith unhooks a small feed tube from its compartment in the chair. He cannot be bothered to drag himself onto the seat, though, instead drawing the length of hose out until its small metal spigot can be held to his almost lipless mouth. The healers say- or said, since they were later dispatched with due to their intimate knowledge- that such specialized skin may simply require more time to heal. The nutrigel slipping past the abused flesh, however, is the only substance simple enough for his stomach to process. It has an oily, brown-green iridescent look to it that suggests an incredibly foul flavor- perhaps it is something of a blessing that he no longer truly possesses a sense of taste.

"She is safe," he rasps to himself between hateful sips. "She is safe." Over and over again- if it didn't sound like cryptic nonsense from his broken voice alone, it does in his frantic repetition. A statement of fact, and of truth he intends to uphold; as in the Nubian game called Devil's Towers, it is imperative to protect one's queen. False promises aside, Vader has never believed the Emperor disinterested in Plagueis' secret. The concept of extending or recalling life must make Palpatine ravenous, especially given his present state.

A harsh sound echoes in the white and unreflective chamber. A terrible little warble so decayed it takes Vader himself more than a few moments to identify it as the sick remains of his own chuckle. It sounds worse raw than it does through the stygian vocoder. The sudden notion that accompanies it is so triumphant, so entertaining, that he doesn't bother to stifle the noise even as he motions for the lights to dowse completely. His laughter rattles, as he does, in the shapeless darkness.

The apprentice has succeeded where the Master failed, and by grace only of this: Palpatine, the great philosopher and politician has been looking for a profound revelation, the key to immortality.

From the beginning, Vader has behaved as any mechanic would, looking only for those tools necessary to hold onto what is his.

* * *

An old Jedi proverb holds that there are two aspects of the Force which bow to no being's command: death, and time.

Darth Vader- that which was salvaged and re-stitched from the charred remains of Anakin Skywalker- has now proven that this, as with most Jedi teachings, is a lie. Yet the evidence was only a side-effect of that which he sought, a road so long and strange it holds little in common with the clean, careful walkways of the Temple.

He has never been particularly concerned with the latter aspect, but the past few years have seen him become obsessively preoccupied with the first. Windu once argued, during interminable hours of philosophy review, that Time was lifespan of the Force and Death merely the reaction of all finite things within it- a pretentious way of saying they amounted to the same thing. The image resurfaces, as so many of the moments from the life he has abandoned, in an idle moment, and is as easily suffocated as many of its brethren. Though his new allegiance and recent actions have proven him one of its most devoted agents, Vader declared himself an enemy of Death long before taking up the mantle of Sith.

 _('Some day, I will be the most powerful Jedi of them all. I will even be able to stop people from dying.')_

Foolish words from a child more foolish still- pathetic creature who accepted Obiwan's advice, dallying in the catechism of 'dreams pass in time' when his mother's life could have been saved. No Jedi can achieve victory over Death but, from the moment he wakes to hear those words

 _('Is she safe?' he'd asked. And how the Emperor had laughed!)_

from his duplicitous Master, Vader had known he must grind that reaper, mortality, beneath his heels. He will _not_ suffer thieves.

The man he was before had few possessions; it could be argued that he never even owned himself. Chattel as a child and a tool as an adult. The Jedi barely bothered to dress up their slavery, for did he not utter 'yes, master' until the words were a meaningless mantra, long after he was 'freed'?

He holds no delusions about his status now, having traded one whip hand for another. This master, many would argue, is far more sadistic and cruel. Yet this straight-forward malice is almost redemptive, and Vader has always preferred direct aggression. The Emperor is a man of myriad complexities, plans within plans, and manipulative agendas (much of which bores his apprentice just as much as dry philosophy once did), but what he _wants_ is simple.

Power.

It is all and everything; Palpatine's deity and divine conviction, and the only instance in which the old bastard would bow his head is at the altar of his own all-consuming ambition. The many masters and often unfathomable (not to mention contradictory) expectations of Anakin Skywalker's life are gone now. The incarnation forged by fire has but one Master, whose promises have proven as worthless as those of the Jedi. The time will come; it will come, when the ways of the Sith have made Vader the warrior Skywalker could never have been, and the cycle of apprentice and master shall follow the Dark Side's ordained path.

Vader does not serve the abstract, nor is the treasure he seeks a thing of wealth or expansive domination. The walls he sought to storm belonged to the Bitch-Goddess Death, who was so known on Tatooine for her caprice and half-ruined face. A beauty to be sure, of carmine lips and eyes the color of deep pools one could never find on such a desolate world. But, beneath her cloak of sand, what she hid so coquettishly was not even the face of a hag, but something far worse- which drove men into madness beyond telling. On Naboo, of course, Death is embodied much differently. A planet of such abundance could hardly do otherwise. Male; a stone-faced immortal, beautiful save for his great serpentine fangs, whose bride is the springtime goddess. This god procured his beloved through trickery, or so ran Padme's narration one night as she lay with her own young husband, close and shielded from the Lake Country rains. Nubians are fond of duplication and reflection; decoys, word-plays, paintings and murals which seem to change if the eye lingers too long.

 _She_ was sent back to Naboo to be interred; sent back to her people as if they had any right to take more from her after she had bled herself dry in their name. It smacked of Obiwan, quite frankly- seeking to rob his former apprentice of the right even to mourn the wife whose loyalties he'd tried to turn. It pleases Vader- insofar as anything pleased him, in those days- to know the Jedi's machinations were what ultimately afforded him the opportunity to save the only thing worth saving. On Naboo- as on Alderaan- the dead are secret and sacred. The corpse is not allowed to decay until the appropriate elaborate and esoteric rituals have been performed, most particularly if the death is a matter of State. The process, depending on one's rank and familial theology, can take days.

How surprising, then, to have emerged from the pain-forge of his reconstitution to find so little objective time had passed! He had endured centuries of torture, days beneath the burning twin suns of merciless needles and nerve reconstruction. Only his screaming underscored the accumulation of moments, like the wind howling through the Dune Sea. This surgical agony had risen to a degrees where the aid was indistinguishable from the burning tumult which preceded it. All was betrayal, nauseous necessity, and the rage that was the lifeblood of the Dark Side. The whir and hiss of bone saws, lancets, and laser-scalpels became the screams and pitiful gasps of dying younglings; the new mechanical metronome of his breathing their constant refutation.

On the other side of this aphotic abyss, he emerged as a thing both unmade and new. He is stronger- a fact his new Master had readily acknowledges. He is also different in ways which were not immediately apparent, and of which he is in no hurry to inform the Emperor. The mind which contained fully the memory of the identity he abandoned had become colder... streamlined, compartmentalized, and remolded into a perfect conduit for the hatred and anger which are even now his constant companions. This is a power the Jedi could never fathom, and it is no wonder they sought to conceal it with their teachings of the Light.

Three days comprised the whole of the surgeries that saved him for this facsimile of life. Too much time, if not for Kenobi's vindictive choices. Certainly, it was far too long in the eyes of Lord Sidious, familiar though he was with Nubian customs. Whatever method Plagueis employed for revival, Palpatine believed it involved the extension of existing life, or revival immediately after its extinction. This, too, has served Vader well; his Master saw no harm when the new Sith claimed the body, confiscating it to the shock, dismay, and general disgust of the Naboo.

Padme doesn't belong to them, no matter the delusions of the rabble. Her service to her people- to the citizens of the galaxy- had been for nothing, exercised as they were amidst ungrateful mongrels who would not listen. Her calls for change had fallen on deaf ears, as had her attempts to expose the Senate for what it was. And is- under Palpatine, it is still only a show to appease the naive, though now it is fortunately drained of any power. She would have seen, eventually, how much better centralized power is; how the singular will of someone competent can so outweigh the directionless, conflicting interests of the masses.

That said individual must always be Palpatine is in no way a requirement.

Vader had been glad for the numbing, fiery support of the Dark Side when he first beheld Padme again. It would have been too terrible to bear otherwise. He is not unfamiliar with corpses. In many ways, they formed the secondary architecture of the Clone Wars for, although the majority of the conflicts were fought with clones and droids, they were frequently augmented with groups of Jedi and the natives of the planet in question. For years, the bodies of the Tuskens- endlessly, exponentially repeated until they formed their own landscape- had haunted Anakin's dreams. As the war dragged on, however, they bothered him less and less. Corpses became much like the mangled parts, wires, and gutted chassises of fallen battle droids. Components, nothing more. In this same way, he tells himself that the purge at the Temple was easy, once the initial bile had been fought down.

 _(It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all.)_

Looking at Padme's body, however, had filled Vader with a near-religious terror. The cover of the preservation casket was laced with a phosphorescent webbing of gold within the vacuum-sealed duraglass; biological agents to assist with the maintenance of cellular vigor. It cast a dim, ethereal light on that beautiful, but inappropriately placid face, throwing its expressionlessness into stark relief. _His_ Padme had never been devoid of emotion. Even as Amidala, or standing proudly in her Senate pod, she had projected an almost palpable aura of _being_ \- of confidence and oddly approachable command.

That which composed his Beloved had become only an inert object, abandoned and blasphemous in its mocking similarity to the exquisite soul it once had housed. A doll, an idol, like the excruciatingly detailed milk-glass goddesses of Dubhe- gorgeous, but ultimately dependent on the investment of belief. Vader knew then with absolutely certainty: he must not only determine Palgueis' method for re-exciting midi-chlorians; but also retrieve the ineffable substance that made Padme _herself_ , and return it to its coffer of flesh. He became a man who sought not the mystical cup, but the wine within; not the Kyber crystal of legend but the light which shone through it, granting its glamor.

Only this potentiality that allowed Vader to endure. The value and aching emptiness of the object made its presence difficult to tolerate and- because it was still the well-known form he paid homage to as both boy and man- it exerted also a fascination and attraction. He has sloughed off many of the morals the Jedi saddled him with, but he still has his own (often incomprehensible to others) code of ethics. From this half-mindless idolatry, even he must shrink.  
Only the tongueless and fickle desert gods know what Palpatine thinks he's doing with his prize.

Like many a miser before him, he then became possessed by the desired object, a portion of himself always preoccupied with its care and safekeeping. Vader, however, was also beset with symptoms rare even amongst the covetous. That is, torment by that which he guarded- drawn and repulsed in nearly equal measure. He could barely stand to be in the same room with it, but the compulsion to keep it in sight was equally strong, haunted as he was by the possibility of accidental damage or deliberate sabotage.

He had kept the sealed bier in a central windowless chamber, ringed by the elaborate security and monitoring systems that riddle his Imperial apartments. Living retainers are not to be endured anywhere therein; the Sith is always attended upon by droids- either of his own design or heavily altered- alone. A phalanx of these he built solely to ensure the constant upkeep and care of a treasure which, while not living, he also refused to recognize as dead. Despite the spartan chamber, a hushed and funerary atmosphere quickly infiltrated the space, the sort of half-anticipatory awe and placid petition which were so common in temples on Naboo.

And would they not have come to her, the Naboo, if she'd lain in Theed's elaborate Necropolis with other legendary figures? _Intercede for us, o wise departed! Take pity, listen..._ Oh, no- she did enough for that in life! He has become her sole penitent, and grave are his sins. Yet he will rectify this; he will show her- gently, as he should have all along- make her understand, and the thought of failure does not even occur to him consciously.

Vader's mind has changed- is changing, still. Some of this may be laid at the door of the Dark Side he has now so enthusiastically embraced, but that is not the sole author. It is his own maddeningly regular, unstoppable breath; the intersection of organic and the machine. The fleshy remnants are weak, despite still technically outnumbering their artificial counterparts, and those augmentations have become mutable. They are a part of him, wending even into his thoughts. It is parabolic- he has progressed so far into absolute, cold reality that he has curved backwards to arrive at madness. He is unhinged because he has achieved the ultimate sanity, which no organic being was ever made to bear.

This change, at least, banished the final lingering Jedi response to unnecessary slaughter, and any pretense to sentient compassion. Killing is his primary occupation (not so drastic a transition, from a certain point of view). Inspiring fear comes close at its heels. Beware, they whisper in the ranks of the officers, in the meager remnants of the once powerful merchant clans, amongst the royal hangers-on and nobility of the Imperial Court. Oh, beware the Emperor's displeasure, for his wrath is separate and animate. Draw his ire and you will find Vader, the death's head, at your door.

He oversees the siege of Ithor; half the population gone in three nights. On Deneb, he strides amidst streets choked with the bloated corpses of citizens exposed to poison gas. The Kessel Miner's Union no longer shouts its slogans, for their lungs have undergone explosive decompression from the expedient application of a Star Destroyer's laser canons to their oxygen reclamation facility. Kashyyyk is practically charred to cinders, its hairy denizens sold into slavery the galaxy over.

( _They are all of them slaves, every last being in the Empire, so what does it matter if some are more clearly labeled than others?_ )

The Banking Clan, so foolishly seduced by Dooku, has been reduced to an arrangement of headless stumps, and the Techno Union Army is nothing but slag. It is a campaign of subjugation the likes of the which the galaxy has never seen. A wave of the Emperor's twisted, arthritic hand and histories vanish, cities are erased. Eventually, says the demon regnant, whole _planets_ will be demolished.

The Jedi are little more than a fairy story now, treated as old legend despite their very recent extinction. Their mere mention is too dangerous, making nervous denizens of the galaxy relegate them to the land called Past. The Temple was razed to the ground, but even that was not enough for Sidious. He will leave nothing to chance, assiduously burning and corrupting every scrap in the Archives. But such total effacement takes time, and Vader has always had a talent for exploiting the blind spots of others. Secretly, he combed through the towers of tomes slated for the incinerator, searching for a word, a phrase that might aid him. That he was able to hide his quest from his Master is no small feat, but it is not really surprising either. As a Jedi, the creature that was Skywalker had been able to conceal his precious blasphemy- the very love and possession forbidden by the order. Now he carries something equally forbidden to the Sith.  
That is, hope.

That the well-spring of this present emotion lies in his old devotion is easy to ignore. The Emperor attributes the constant, volcanic fermenting of anger to thwarted possession. He thinks his apprentice has been broken by failure, and Vader is all the more gratified for it. Dangling on promises, is the Hutt saying- they were fond of hooking their own kind up like worms, leaving them suspended over a riotous mob. Sidious had never known Plagueis' secret, and now neither Master or apprentice speak of that deceitful promise which finally bought dead Skywalker's loyalty.

Vader searched methodically, ceaselessly, but for quite some time it seemed in vain. The Jedi, of course, would never have openly discussed something as openly heretical as resurrection. To become one with the Force was seen as the natural order of things and the laudable goal of all the Order's members. Yet, once he knew what he was looking for, Vader was able to detect a few oblique references. Appalled warnings in regards to personal affection, an almost pathological fear of emotional intimacy.

Like many Sith, he had begun to suspect that Plagueis was once a Jedi. Erased from Temple histories, punished with namelessness by those he betrayed- but not so completely as to destroy what became Vader's first true lead. Supplementing the official record had been on one crumbling synth-paper chronicle, so decayed it might have fallen apart before it could be burned. The author referenced an expulsion, held up as an example of Jedi magnanimity. The Order was gracious, they had given their brother a second chance. The woman he had transgressed with was dead, victim of a plague that swept up entire planets. Without her temptation, and with enough repentance, they condescended that he _might_ return to the fold.

In that Sith sin of pride, the historian went on, the guilty Jedi turned on the Order and rejected the offer out of hand. It seemed his tempting outsider was survived by a daughter and, in one small passage, the censor failed to render her also unknown.

 _Her_ name was Bast.

* * *

He returns to her swiftly, of course. The gravity between them

 _(which cannot be seen and therefore must be darkness)_

allows for nothing else. Vader's own rest consists of the vile protein mixture, twenty minutes of the semi-conscious state he must now call sleep, and the type of centering exercises he has not had to concern himself with in decades. The Sith Lord is neither soothed nor replenished by these actions, but he did not expect to be. The Light Side of the Force is forfeit, and the Dark invigorates only with its own elements. Anger, fear, hatred.

( _'Possession is of the Dark Side.')_

True enough. And Vader does feel obscurely gentled by the sight of her, that well-loved form now settled in a true attitude of sleep amongst the rosy shadows of the glow-globes. Salvage, as so many of his gifts to her have been. These came from a Nubian cruiser, impounded by the ever-ambitious Captain Tarkin; what few personal annotations Plagueis left indicate it is best to stir... the _patient's_ memory with the subtly familiar, all the while avoiding that which might be too overwhelming. At least, at first- for more lurks in the undermind than even the sages may know, Plagueis wrote. Despite the heavy snow of sedative in her veins, it is clear Padme's sleep is restless. She had partly thrown off the embroidered quilt, while the robe has inadvertently fallen to expose one creamy shoulder and a hint of lush breast. The crushed emerald velvet is heavy and warming, but adheres faithfully to the curves of her body; here hip and buttock, there the turn of an ankle crossed over the opposite foot's arch. There's a hint of ripeness to her belly, where...

( _'Well. Some things must after all pass in time, and are best not thought of.'_ )

Both robe and duvet are hers, taken from the single chest's worth of her possessions he was able to rescue. Palpatine has been assiduous about erasing any who refused to bow to his new regime, setting fire to many Senate apartments under the thin guise of spice-trader arson. That Padme, and a good many of the others amongst the Delegation of 2000, died along with the Republic is of little consequence. (And certainly those who _have_ bowed, like Organa and Mon Mothma, have sold themselves into a lifetime of surveillance and their families into a perpetual status of hostage.) Sidious' vanity is such that he must blast away every hint of the unflattering, as Tusken Raiders burn the tents, bodies, livestock, and all possessions of any rival tribe they slaughter. 'May even the sands disremember you,' is a loose translation of the victory cry.

Many of the items in the chest are either prosaic or mystifying to Vader. He has no idea which how many will have true meaning for her. There is a slim screen reader, along with a few volumes of classic bound tomes in Nubian and Alderaanian. (One of these had an inscription within which he could not translate, and he nearly destroyed it for thinking of how Organa liked to 'trade' recommendations with Padme.) A few pairs of slippers and articles of clothing hastily gathered or already packed, among which was the gown of a handmaid- an old contingency plan, or did she have a more powerful premonition than she let on? Loose amidst these larger items are a half-empty bottle of perfume, data crystals whose encodings he has not yet bothered to crack, and a chipped miniature of a Nubian goddess he snatched from her dressing table.

 _('It's broken,' her young husband once observed._  
'No,' she wagged a playful finger, 'it's lucky. I put it in my pocket for my very first exam, and I passed. I kept passing, even after my roommate chipped it during a prank.'  
'That's not luck,' he'd muttered, setting it down carefully all the same. 'That's just you.')

There is also an old tin of embroidery floss and a half-finished blanket done in red and gold. The traditional Nubian colors for initiations- weddings, coronations, births. Red is supposedly the color of vibrant joy. That, of course, he has taken the liberty of removing.

 _(For indeed, there are many things he would return to her. Opportunities that were missed and might now be recaptured, chances of which they could not previously have dreamed.  
But not that. Alas, never _that_.)_

The japor snippet was not amongst those items in the trunk, but it was easy enough to recover. Padme was wearing it still, when the end came (he may take some hope from that), and the Naboo intended to inter her with it. A little over seventy-two cycles ago, Vader unwound it from her fingers as he began the complex task of... securing her return. Despite its immersion in bacta- which was hardly kind to her funerary garments- it is unscathed. Like all products of Tatooine, it is resilient.

When summoned, E1-OH brings him the pendant, dangling from one of its many functional appendages. It seems quite small in Vader's hand, but it is clean now and looks much as it always has. The droid departs when waved away, leaving the room entirely. All of the Sith's creations require few prompts, and none of them are by any means verbose.

The necklace, for all its delicacy and seemingly diminished size, appears also to have acquired new weight. Vader cannot- need not- take his attention from Padme to study it though. After all, each groove is familiar, though the finger (in fact, almost the entire hand) he cut so long ago in his enthusiastic carving is now less than ash. How surprised he'd been upon their reacquaintance, to find she'd kept it. A few thin white scars from the Battle of Naboo were all the physical evidence by which he might remember her. He needed no such memento; her image stayed with him so powerfully it seemed at times he could summon her at will, as angels are told to have been summoned by those they guard. It was weakness to have kept the slave-boy's offering, but a weakness he treasured because it was hers. It was unusual for Padme to show her hand so, especially when claiming- damning- them both to be bound by their honor.

Secrets came to bind them instead, and silence, both of which he preferred. She'd felt concerned, at times cagey or unfathomably guilty for having led him astray. He could have told Padme he was hers before even Qui Gon turned assessing eyes on that useless slip of a boy, who so readily swallowed nonsense even Jinn was naive enough to imbibe. Convergences and prophecies and beings Chosen by the Force. If Fate pushed threads or loaded dice with any of her many hands that day, it was to usher Padme's path _just so_. Giving voice to such sentiments would not soothe her, he knew; she did not understand that secrecy bound them closer, allowed him to own a little part of her that no one else would ever see. Or perhaps she would, in that mundane mysticism which came to her so instinctively, have divined the whole truth before he finished the first sentence. For all its greenery, Naboo was more a world of mirrors than even glittering Coruscant; doubles and decoys, mazes and hidden meanings.

While aware of the disturbance he brings with him, Vader never the less succumbs to the draw, taking the few strides to her bedside. Standing over her, he can see the faint frown casting itself on her features, the small noise of distress at the back of her throat. Her fingers twitch, seeking or tracing.

To ask for her name had been presumptuous; so much of her essential nature seemed so readily available that Vader had lost sight of practical expectations. What few resources he has indicate that personal details return gradually, larger facets of self preceding more intricate knowledge of events. Yet he had been gratified to see the half-conscious motion of her hand, attempting that elaborate shape that symbolized _her_. The two symbols he himself has barely mastered, though she gave them to him freely enough. The name of her true self, uttered on on one of Tatooine's innumerable, endlessly heated noons.

Though her hand is unconsciously open, waiting, Vader still takes a few moments to come to a decision- or one which he is pretending not to have reached long ago. He reaches out, fitting that delicate palm to his own larger one, closing his fingers with the utmost care. His free hand tucks the medallion away in one of his belt's many pouches. The japor snippet will always belong to Padme, a token of that which cannot be articulated, but it has attained a new and dangerous quality. The potency of memory is not to be underestimated. A time will come when the return of the necklace is appropriate, but not now.

Standing there at Padme's bedside, on legs which will not tire, holding her hand with one that cannot feel, even Vader is honest enough to admit it will likely be a very long while.

.

* * *

END NOTES:  
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. If I could trouble you a bit more to comment or kudos, I would be very appreciative!


	3. Fait Accompli

NOTES: Just a quick shout-out to **gaijinmononoke** , **Lou** , and other guests/users I haven't been able to thank directly. I can't tell you how grateful I am for the feedback and motivation! ;-) I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read and/or review. This is the last of the chapters I have posted elsewhere, but I hope to have an entirely new installment up soon.  
Just a head's up: this section does briefly deal with a few medical/biological issues associated with pregnancy. For further details, check the end notes.

* * *

 _ **Afterimage 3/?**  
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory (garnettrees)_

* * *

What does one usually awaken to? Twining mists of dream and memory, the sudden jolt of something left undone, the clamorous waiting mass of 'things that need doing'. She has none of these; indeed, she knows not even the sleep-sodden fumbling towards consciousness, despite the earlier kiss of the sedative needle. Awake between one moment and the next, she is done with transitions. Sleeping has done nothing to dull the scrape of reality against her quivering flesh, so of what use can it possibly be?

He is present, somewhere in the dim corners of the chamber, betrayed by the heraldic sound of his breathing. It is as if he strides forth always with an invisible retinue, guards rattling unseen sabers

 _(sabers... that word, the brightness of it, the antithetical nature of certain blood-shade colors casting their glow, making familiar eyes into those of a savage stranger. But no. No, no, and no.)_

restlessly. How odd it must be, to bear that constant and invisible companion.

Her own respiration is an equal betrayal, having abandoned its tempo of repose. He must know she's conscious by the change in rhythm. Silence prevails in spite of this mutual awareness- recognition of kinship and polar opposite in one. Her limbs seem naught but a collection of separate exhausted bits of automata, loosed from any ephemeral strings by which she might operate them. It seems impossible to be at once this mentally alert and physically drained. How in the world-

 _(in all the worlds)_

did she manage to limp down that long gray hallway, even with his assistance? It's more than the remnants of medicine swirling in her veins. Rather, the exhaustion makes it seem as if the very air about her- still the rose twilight of the incongruous lanterns- is sodden. Freezing, foreign, and more oppressive even than his gaze, which at this point feels palpable enough to be its own entity.

With an effort that makes her fear her bones have petrified, she manages to turn her head, lay her cheek against the pillow and return his regard. He is only an outline in the ambient illumination, uncomfortably emphasized at certain angles where his form is thrown into contrast by the bank of monitors and their own feeble glow. The droid is not in attendance, and its Master does not even sit. He only stands there, an indecipherable stone pillar, looking as though the universe could come crashing down around his shoulders and he still wouldn't move an inch. This constancy is not exactly reassuring, but it is a welcome alternative to the chaos she feels- baying, thinly leashed- waiting both within and without.

That he knows she's studying him in return is obvious, for the mask tilts down ever-so-slightly under her level gaze.

 _'I see you,'_ she thinks. But what does that accomplish? She has no context for him. Of far more import is what _he_ sees, looking across the room at her own accessing, invalid's eyes. She doesn't even know what color her own eyes are! Not one single physical detail

 _(not blue... not _her_ eyes, anyway)_

from which to extrapolate an image of herself. There's no way for her to imagine the tableau between them, her own figure on the other side of some elegantly delineated playing board, balancing him out. His presence has too much weight. Not vitality- which implies something fully organic and living- but potency. He is filled to the brim with some essential elixir which makes him wholly himself, while she is an empty vessel.

'Vessel' is a word she remembers suddenly. And, by virtue of association, 'ship'. That was her concern earlier in the corridor, which she had not then been able to articulate. Is she moored somewhere, or still speeding on unknown trajectory away from whatever it is that came Before? 'Vessel' can also mean 'container'. _Ov'shrite, camarilla,_ cup, coffin, _hort_ , palanquin, goblet. Every word, every concept, comes with its own flock of sounds. Its kin.

Its tempting to think of _him_ as a vessel full of dark

 _(and he looks, in some ways, like the carven god they'd place on the prow of a water-ship, in the old days of... the thought fades as she reaches for it. Gone.)_

ineffable ichor, but that's unfair. She seems, at least, to have some sense of logic and justice. Also, judging by appearances is intellectually lazy. From the way the unresponsiveness of her own body rankles, she can tell she does not like indolence, enforced inaction. Instinct has its virtues- she won't deny that she's on guard. But the silence between them, however charged and unnaturally punctuated, is not precisely uncomfortable. If anything, it's she who projects expectancy. He doesn't seem to be doing anything other than _look_ at her.

That sense of something else, of a third presence, is also strong. It feels a bit safer to glance about in search of it now, but she forces herself to refrain. Her current companion's focus is still intense, but there's a... confidence? ... to it now that suggests less volatility than earlier, in the strange room with its basin. That he wants her attention is inescapable- and besides, craning her neck to search the room with her gaze really isn't an option. She can't muster enough strength to lift her head, and she quickly discovers that straining her eyes towards peripheral parts of the room only presents her with a faint sense of nausea and a doubled view of her own nose.

The concept of this expected person is precarious anchor- something solid in a chaos so extreme that nothing may be relied upon. If she's been hurt, even after

 _(the **fire** )_

everything, wouldn't they be present at her side? Any number of things- including herself- have manifested from nothing recently. Surely, if given even if the smallest reserve of strength, she too might make a summoning and draw forth this 'other' with relative ease. He- and she is certain this third is also a 'he'- remains absent and anticipated. Not theoretical, for she has within her still so much belief in and for him, but not in a determinate state either.  
In flux.

Anxiety stirs in the uncharted distances of her being. Her companion senses it at the same time she does, or perhaps consults only the computers and their esoteric measurements. Whatever the impetus, he crosses to her bedside- one, two, three long strides that eat up the space between them.

"Do not be alarmed," he says, then pauses perceptibly. Is he acknowledging the irony of that statement, or searching for words? He may only be adhering to the rhythm of the respirator, since a full cycle passes before he continues, "Your present weakness is a reaction to the shock. One might compare it to the body's adjustment in environments of varying gravity."

She manages a faint, slow nod, though this really tells her very little. At the moment, she's more concerned by her quick recognition of the analogy. The steady tide of empirical knowledge, of cold hard facts generally unrelated to her identity, is a relief at odds with intuition. While the phonemes and ideograms of various languages still tangle, vines run to riot in her mind, it seems there is also an intellectual framework that was never quite displaced. She does not have a deficit of incidental learning; unlike the child who must touch to discover the deterrent, she already knows the stove is hot. She can recall now, for example, that the thick gelatinous discs he attached to her arms earlier are called 'nutri-patches', designed specifically for trauma patients that they might absorb the caloric and vitamin equivalent of meals through the skin. Prosaic facts drift on the same tide as the medicine- 'sedative', is the word- in her veins. Disbursing slowly, dependent on other currents. The stylized plants which crawl in silken stitches across her blanket are called 'spring's beak', and grow only in the southern climes of-

But that is too far to reach and, though she frowns in concentration, part of her is not sorry to have reached an impasse. She is the disconcerted occupant of an empty house where unidentifiable echoes presage furniture that appears from thin air. There are worlds upon worlds in the galaxy, sets upon sets of words- _'languages'_ \- in her mind. She is afraid of the sheer force

 _( **the** Force)_

of all that knowing, held at bay (so far as she can tell) only by her exhaustion.

"It will take time for you to acclimate," her erstwhile guardian adds. Or rather, continues, for she realizes very little objective time has passed. This dissonance between inner and outer chronology strikes her as foreign, painful. Why can't he just put her back... back...

Her throat protests the attempt at anything other than simple breathing with an awesome wave of discomfort, but she manages to speak as she did before. Careful movement of her lips, and almost no sound.  
' _Zra'haze?_ ' Why?

And he is watching, watching closely enough to read her pantomime in the room's faint light, though he does not quite respond in kind. "You must recover," the animate shadow tells her. Basic- that is the standard tongue by which he communicates, though he clearly understands much of the linguistic debris she's been forced to utilize. The name of the first, most intimate form of speech- as vital as the muscle of her own tongue in its fleshy cave- insists on eluding her.

His response is a non-answer, a particular breed of sentient reply to which, despite lack of concrete memory, she has the aversion of the over-exposed. Yet that's not quite fair. Thus, when those ponderous hands- not so much clad in leather as they are _skinned_ in it- reach to help prop her up a little, she masters the instinct to flinch before anything actually shows on her face. He has never, in their short and interminable acquaintance, deliberately made her feel threatened. If menace is an indisputable part of his being, it may only be the natural threat exuded by any creature with great claws or awesome fangs. She does not yet know. In this blurred realm of solid facts and murky narrative, he has claim to only slightly more definition than she. Her gratitude for the assistance, both now and before, is real enough.  
Moreover, there is (and she smiles faintly now, amused by the discovery of such deeply ingrained propriety) no reason to be rude.

In the end, her body's protests are such that, despite the added support of the pillows, her vantage point is not much improved. Still, she can now see both doors; that by which he enters and the other, which convention dictates would lead to a 'fresher. Not that she is going anywhere at the moment.

"I will see to these," he says, with a brief touch to indicate the nearest nutripatch. It is a command- he is as confined to them as she suspects he may be to his armor- but the pause and lack of movement thereafter render it a question. He does not impinge upon her person. Even when she nods, his touch is cautious, distant, and chaste- just as it was in the room of her awakening. The way one might handle a particularly rare flower.

 _(Flower- yes, a word which encompasses a category of many other words. All sizes, all shades; the hearty and the exotic, and those that run riot to dust their blossoms on the hillsides like snow. The little white ones she'd found in her wet, bedraggled hair, and the shape her fingers had chased, traced by the tongue as 'phaa'...)_

The gel patches on her pulse points have turned black. Dead now, and empty, as fruit left to rot past its season. He peels them off with a delicacy she would not have credited to such large fingers. They are not unwieldy, these digits, merely in proportion with his demiurge's hands. And besides, many a predator is capable of intricate work. Wookies, for example-

 _(and why does she _know_ this example, when she knows not her own face?)_

one of the few sentient species that could be taller than her host, are craftsmen of arrows whose fletchings depend on microscopic accuracy to fly true. Intelligence takes on a multitude of forms, many of which make her own seem fragile and vulnerable by comparison. _His_ appearance is seen through the lens of her perception; a lens as real as those dark orbs in his mask, for all they are metaphorical.

 _('A gesture that seems ominous in one society may be an honorable acknowledgement in another. Rank and status are conveyed via any number of non-verbal and visual cues. Beware the mirror you carry within you, that assumed reflections do not blind you to fact!')_

_Someone_ trained her well. The words are faded, faceless; they have a cadence of catechism, of numerous childish voices speaking as one. She can picture such students vaguely, but cannot place herself among them even with the most vigorous application of imagination.

This broken recollection is a curse/gift she must be mindful of. No sooner does she think this then it is proven. Having peeled away the last of the defunct apparatus, her companion turns. He does not speak, yet the far door opens as though in response to summons. She, briefly preoccupied with maintaining the position of her arm as he had lifted it, looks up to see the floating shape of E1-OH, a bare collection of angles in the lamplight. There is no illumination in the corridor, but she is beginning to think her strange rescuer might not need it- by natural means or otherwise. It is her own muddled psyche that adds an intolerable glare, superimposing itself over the scene until it transforms the droid's silhouette into something obscured by painful brilliance. Something threatening which, she is suddenly certain, will soon come to hover over her prone form and take... and take...

Logic rebels. It is only a nursing droid- _his_ nursing droid, which she encountered earlier. How she knows it is not quite a standard model is just another little mystery. _He_ is now standing between her and this mechanical servant, this thing which will surely exhort her to push, to bear down and take deep breaths, and _what is it all_ _ **for**_ _?_ She wants to scramble back against the bulkhead, defend herself with tooth and nail and any object at hand, but the hand she thrusts forth only falls inadequately against the swell of her abdomen, trembling and empty

 _(empty, **empty** )_

under the green velvet of her robe. The lance of pain in her skull matches that which seems to spear through her core, though only one of these sensations is real. She is just cognizant enough to berate herself for this nonsense, so soon after failure, guilt, and loss unspeakable.

 _(oh, he may have lied to her, but she perpetrated the greater deception against herself! To think that what was forbidden would not corrupt, to begin in secretive darkness what could never survive in the light. And that is the price she must pay now, the fruit of that union being forfeit...)_

Pride and self-protection cannot stand in the face of this overwhelming grief. His hands are on her wrists again, pulling aware the lunatic fingers determined to reach inside her skull and- do what? Blot out the pain, stop reality, pull forth the memory to turn over and over in her hands?

It's the futility that brings her back to some semblance of rational thought. He turns away from her only long enough to bark admonishments at the droid, which disappears far more quickly than it arrived. Through the whole protracted-moment violence of the ordeal, she has not shed a tear or even managed a real scream. She lays there, stunned at what has swept over her like a

 _('Sandstorm- they're deadly enough, but the raiders ride in their wake...')_

cyclopean typhoon. Already it seems unreal, her mind hurriedly excising cancerous images in a frantic attempt at self-preservation, and she turns her own face away from his obvious and intense scrutiny. Eyes closed, shutting him away, she attempts to calm her breathing.  
There is an example rhythm readily at hand.

By degrees, she is able to relax, picturing the panic as a red mist which her willpower slowly but methodically dissolves. A clear visualization exercise, though the source of the tool remains obscured within her. She makes no attempt to trace the origin of this lesson, the tumultuous associations inspired by the droid leaving healthy caution as well as terror in their wake. How could she have forgotten, if only for a moment, the one blindingly obvious truism of her situation? Trepidation towards her rescuer may be natural, but even his unknown variable is nothing to her internal chaos. How could she have been so foolish as to turn her back on the most unstable element in this situation? _Herself_.

'Who _are_ you?' she thinks, longing for a mirror, wondering what shades might cluster- unseen but potent- behind her reflection. What are the names of her dead, or those whose lives she would shield even at the destruction of her own? What scars does she carry, and what crimes might she herself be charged with?

"You are safe," the armored shadow tells her, only when she is calm enough that the statement cannot absorb unintended pity. She nods, but cannot yet bring herself to look at him. Having released her wrists, he retains still possession of her right hand. If he were anyone else

 _( **who** else?)_

she would say he is holding it. No crushing threading of the fingers, this, but an engulfing clasp whose careful caging reveals the strength he does not exert. Though each and every one of her muscles quivers in protest against the physical intrusion of memory, her body still feels somewhat divorced from her racing mind. Demarkation of the the thinest glass, but a barrier all the same. The ache in her bones communicates quite empathically that _they_ did not sign up for this. Still, she manages to clench her fingers around his great gloved palm- partly in frustration with herself, but mostly to prove that he is there.

As if sensing her inner conflict, he adds, "Some impressions may be... vivid, but they are in the past."

Mephitic though it may be, the solidity of his voice is useful. It helps her believe in the reality of her situation, for what else does she have to go on? The symptoms are as clear as the cause is unknown, and her reaction to the droid has temporarily damaged her faith in medicine and its puritanical father, Science. At last she must answer the gaze she senses but cannot see. She looks at the death's head mask, unable to communicate her gratitude with anything other than her eyes and another pathetic squeeze of his fingers.

After a moment, he sets her hand gently on the coverlet, bringing from a nearby table the fresh nutripatches which the droid left in its haste to flee. These he replaces with the same deferential care, though she seems to inspire him now to be a bit more communicative.

"When the worst of this has passed, there is a mixture you may drink to strengthen and soothe your throat," he informs her, cyclical breathing the punctuation of a metronome. "Imbibing the solution would necessitate other accommodations, and so must wait. Without due care, your senses will easily fall prey to overstimulation, and your body is not in a position to combat stress."

This is the most he's ever said to her at once, she notes faintly. More prominent in her thoughts is the fact that- while she recognized her body's need for nourishment almost from the beginning- she had never once thought of food or drink until he spoke of it just now. She is too weak to use the facilities and likely too jittery to tolerate whatever uncomfortable solutions the nursing droid might provide. None of that is germane, as long as she relies solely on absorption of the gel. The limitation should make her yearn for water, for food with substance and taste.  
But her stomach- neither empty nor full- is merely an organ she is aware of in theory, and hunger only an abstract concept.

What has _happened_ to her?

Her companion's brief wealth of speech is followed by a strong sense of depletion, and perhaps embarrassment- though she may be projecting on that last one. The pall holds through the rest of his visit, and he interrupts the oceanic susurrations of his breathing just once, to ask if she is in pain.

Once more tucked up amongst the quilts and furs, she shakes her head in slow negation of every sore fiber in her general being, and in particular denial of the aching void between her hips. To acknowledge these things would bring the slow tide of medicinal sleep, a needle to match the piercing legs of spider-pain which dart along her nerves. She already knows the darkness behind her eyelids down not necessarily provide shelter.

Yet he stares at her so long- straight-backed, unmoving helmet tilted down that he might look at her from his great height. Undefeated by this unseen regard, whatever narrowing of eyes or dubious expression might exist behind that mask, she makes a compromise. Raising her hand just a bit, and with far more incremental effort than she'd like, she rocks it back and forth.

 _'A little, to a degree,'_ she wills him to understand by this motion. At this, he presses a small metal fob- a comm button- into her hand.

"There is relief when you have need of it," he says, briefly touching a lock of her hair. One a safe distance from her actual person, lying as it does over the pillow.

Then, with an abruptness which should not seem strange given his speech, manner, and appearance, he turns on his heel to stride through the obliging door, cape wiring as though actively erasing his presence.

She has no doubt he would return- and quite promptly- if she should press the comm button, but she has no intention of doing so. Perhaps she is only assigning her own relief to the black mirror beast, who reflects so much and projects so little, but the atmosphere between them is very overwhelming. Mystery, loss, expectation, and numerous other qualifiers she cannot pin down at present, all pressing down like the weight of great

 _(ocean depths, in the vertiginous unlighted Core)_

waves on one's shoulders. At times it is not necessarily as unpleasant as that metaphor suggests. Perhaps more like standing in a crystal cavern, where the lovely echoes can eventually mutate into a palimpsest of sound the ear cannot bear. Everything in moderation.

And when has she stood in the midst of such a cave? Is the image a flicker of experience, or only flotsam remaining from some artwork or book? The panic stirred by the well-meaning droid makes her leery of her memories and she is tired, tired. Some obscure sense of rebellion keeps her awake, fingering the comm button he must know she'll do her best to avoid using. Able to roam only with her gaze, she studies the seamless arc of metal as it curves over her bed. Her little niche, like a box laid on its side. She edges one hand to dangle slightly off the mattress, not liking the connotations of lids and closed spaces.

Her wait for any hum or vibration in the bulkhead- signs of hyperdrive and space travel in general- is in vain. The only sound, now that he is gone, is that of the ventilation; obscurely, another form of respiration. The air it recycles smell clean but vaguely earthy, as if supplying refuge deep underground.

 _('A cave is a grave,' says yet another anonymous, pedantic voice in her head. 'Bad strategy.')_

She appears to have had no small number of advisors in her youth, whenever and wherever that was. The tenants and aphorisms come through like signals in the void of space- fraught with static, delayed by distances of varying lightyears. Her past self, transmitting out of order anything she can lay her hands on, pitting hope against the odds that something will get through.

Faintly, she realizes she's biting her lip- a small discomfort that proves soothing. It seems bad habits are coming through just fine. To distract herself, she musters the will to tangle a finger in a lock of her own hair and bring it closer for inspection. 'Brown' is the descriptor she had been groping for. Long brown hair; not unlovely, but not particularly noteworthy either. Yet he handled it with such care. Perhaps he is of a less hirsute race, beneath his armor, and thus finds her exotic. All surmise is useless. Even her supposition that she is somewhere underground may be nothing more than a mental confabulation erected in a desperate attempt to give herself a foothold in reality. The absolute certainly of linear thought and experience is still painful- it feels unnatural, though she knows quite logically that this is how sentient beings do and should perceive events.

There is a longing within her- perhaps a bit childish, in its irrationality- to return to the state from which she has been so debilitatingly extricated. What it was precisely is gone from her, leaving only an impression of relief and nothingness ( _no_ -thingness) that seems far preferable to this confusion. A place to forget, and to forget that forgetting. The long lack of awareness, or of awareness so radically altered she can no longer perceive it as such, seems to have been the result of her failure at the place of dangerous precipices and blazing magma. Beyond

 _(those eyes- yellow eyes, in a familiar face rendered alien by rage)_

that is only a wall of flame, intolerable heat, and a stranglehold that prevented paltry words. Gates closed over an entire lifetime, and bound with more than enough fear to keep her back.

If she could find such a place- an ocean of liquid fire colonnaded by brighter plumes of burning stone- amidst these dark corridors, she might drag herself there. Slow going that would be, and likely an impossible task, but worth every skewer of exhaustion and discomfort the attempt would cost. Her bones strung taut as a failed instrument, she thinks she would readily throw herself in and be seared to ash, since that seems to be the punctuation with served to end the lost and shadowed Before. Back she would go; back into the darkness which is not darkness, the no-thing and non-being, like a trapdoor allowing escape when it seems there is no where else to go.  
Let that slam decisively shut behind her.

Except

 _(you already know he would only come for you again)_

that clearly didn't work

 _('for reasons we cannot explain, her body is failing')_

the first time. It reeks of cowardice, since she seeks it only for her own relief- and it is foolish to repeat failed strategies.

 _('Insanity,' says someone, laughing as people do when speaking a horrible but openly acknowledged truth, 'is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results'.  
Some wit, sparkling cynicism to match crystalline chandeliers and exotic champagne; 'I thought that was called 'serving on the Galactic Senate'?')_

No context for this cliche, which is irksome only because it is so accurate. Nor does she have any real foundation for her instinctive belief that all must return- ill-advised though that may be- in new form when the present vessel expires. Such changes are meant to be true truncations, not aborted encores performed by spare parts.

 _('Do you see? I built him myself, out of spare parts. There's still a lot of work to do.')_

'Is that what I am?' she wonders, briefly entertaining an image of a patch-work girl industriously mending her own cloth-flesh. No way to know and, anyway, it's all metaphor. Her companion (rescuer?) seems confident her present condition is merely a matter of time and recovery

 _('I can fix _anything_.')_

but it is difficult to trust a creature at once so changeable and inviolate. Darkness itself- shadow more amorphous than water.

She drowses, fitful but relieved this makes her choir of unidentified voices quiet and eventually fade. Perhaps, she thinks, lingering on the borderlands of useless and and unwilling sleep, they are both here- she and he- because they have been caught in mid-transformation.  
Which reminds her in turn, with dull inevitability, that most chrysalids have very little choice in what they become.

* * *

Forgotten in that previous metaphor of transformation is the timeless space of the cocoon itself. For many a creature employing such devices, the act of seclusion is eclipsed by the egregiousness of change- they temporarily dissolve or digest themselves in order to form anew. A scouring of selfhood, an expiation, which many a complaining youngling of other species might do well to remember. _She_ would have done well to remember, to have cast about for yet another anonymous axiom by which to guess what is next in store.

 _('There is no learning without pain.')_

Agony wakes her; the flames and claustrophobia have followed her out of her dreams. Though she does not press the comm button- a neat trick, given how tightly she's clutching the fob- it does not take him long to appear at her side. The needle is in his hand, applied carefully and without askance. Perhaps that's just as well, given that the majority of her focus is absorbed in preventing further damage to her tender vocal chords. He would not believe her if she said she did not need the anesthetic; she would not believe herself. The pain is too great for screaming to provide any relief, either, but it still takes a great deal of effort to dissuade her body from trying.

Shot administered and cleaned, he- who seems to assume more and more the emphasis of _He_ , the only other being proven to exist- lingers by her bedside, gloved hand ghosting gently down her arm to settle on her wrist. It is only then she realizes she has fisted her free hand atop the coverlet, nails biting into her palm with pathetic counter-melody. Implacable, cautious, he loosens her fingers from their biting grip. Even the lamplight is gone now. Her only company is is a featureless silhouette, a man-shaped hole in space, backlit by the flickering display of screen on the far side of the narrow room. And what do they say, these sentinels of biometric monitoring, as paroxysm and analgesic war in her system? It occurs to her, rather hysterically, that these machines know more about her than she does.  
Does she include _him_ in that category of treacherous technology?

No... and yes. She has already acknowledged that his strange mixure of distance and solicitude, scrupulous care and ominous being, could never be achieved by a machine. If not for her own malfunctioning organic equipment, she herself might cross to the screens and demand information of them. Keystrokes, passwords perhaps the application of a data crystal, and the computers would have no choice but to yield up their treasure. He, however, is empowered to choose, and chosen he has: to save her from whatever came before, to provide aid, and to continue to do so despite the fact (or so she suspects) that this endeavor may have mutated beyond what he knowingly undertook. He is rescuer, guardian, companion, and- incongruous though it may be- caregiver.

Whether he knows it or not, he is also a hostage-taker. She must know what he knows, and he isn't telling.

'You're not exactly in a position to _ask_,' argues that portion of her mind which seems to resent her more intuitive leanings.

And _He_ had asked, for her name. A simple query, or a test?

The latter, she decides, watching the occasional flashing indicators on his breastplate. Red and blue- though mostly red- they blink irregularly and follow no pattern her bleary eyes can discern. Certainly, they are not in time with the unstoppable dirge of his breathing.

'Would you tell me now?' she inquires of him, in the silence of her mind. 'If we could move beyond glances and gestures and pantomimes, would you give me back my name?'

She suddenly wants it- the identity beyond 'I', that specific word for herself- very badly. More than drink, relief from pain, no-thingness, or even the ability to move her silly, useless legs. It is a solid cypher, a key she would grasp until the delicate edges bite her skin and reminder her of her first victory, her first stumble, and the people who were by her side for both. The first leaving of home, the first lie and secret and shameful fight and love.

With realization of that desire comes the certainty that, no, he would not tell her. Not from cruelty

 _(though he is capable of great cruelty, surely you can see that? oh, little girl in the depthless woods; oh, grown-and-lovely woman with your newly ring-laden hand... surely you must have realized that by now?)_

but because she must remember for herself.

The symbols- two of them, composing just her most intimate name- hover so clearly in her mind's eye. Many words in her native tongue have nearly identical pronunciations; it is the ideogram, or pitch during vocalization, which pins the meaning down. A language of vagarities and word-play, of alias and misdirection. She herself has had more than one name in her time, of that she is certain. There's a layering to it, like differing robes of office, or armor to keep out the unwanted and the unknown. She is not after these, at present; her search is for that primal naming, for who she has been since birth. Etched in crystal, embroidered clearly in imagination, there is still something obscuring full comprehension. Her right hand twitches, but she cannot summon the will to trace the shapes, fearing the attempt will only drive ultimate understanding further away. Instead, she focuses on the voices which must have spoken it to her- calling, chiding, greeting with delight. It would have been said with fondness, with exasperation, annoyance, concern... love.

Too dangerous, that last one.

Think of childhood then- a time before any tempests of passion, laurels or duties or responsibilities to be hung on the syllables. Think of it bare- bare...

 _(Bare as a nereid, she slides through the dark water, her coltish and developing body lent back some grace by the buoyancy. Her movements become swift, serpentine- she is a thing slicing through the waves, an ivory knife. She can swim in almost complete silence, not a splash or motion or crack of skin on surface as she glides, riding the thrust from her high-dive. The night is all indigo ink, moonless, lit only by quartz flecks of stars and the tiered villa perched on its rocky shore. The windows of the latter are alight- all save her own- making the palatial building seem faey and faraway. She climbed down from her balcony, moving on precarious stones and footholds until she reached a verandah from which one might dive directly into the lake's still mirror. It is deep, water still warm from the high-summer day, though the air tonight is a bit chill. She is thirteen, and well into her training; frequently scholarly, often adventurous, and almost always irked or irksome in that diffuse manner particular to adolescence. Gentleness and poise are what others often associate with her, but she cannot see it, aware- as is the curse of that age- only of her own flaws. The dwindling day, one precious pearl on a short strand of holiday, had seen her lose interest in lingering with her companions, but she had not wanted to come in either. Obedient, however, she trooped in along with cousins and school-fellows, attending dinner with her sister and carefully completing the memorizations assigned to her for the evening. Holiday or no- as her instructors so often remind- her path has been chosen.  
She will never be without duty again._

 _Her shoulders felt lighter, however, as her modest schoolgirl's nightshift side away, a crumpled pile of no-nonsense fabric on the agate tile. The frivolity and abandon of the gesture are what appeal to her; she has arranged no silly assignation, is not responding to a dare. She does this for herself, while the night air whispers through the flower-laden trees. New flesh; old wisdom._

 _A call comes, of course, in what seems like only a handful of minutes. Longer than that in truth but it, too, is a blade. It slices through the quiet, breaking the spell. Her name, the expected admonishments. Taking a lungful of air, she goes under, suspended in the water like the very first Queen, who supposedly fell up out of the Core. But the shouting continues unbroken when she resurfaces- her name, over and over again. They're going to wear it out and she'll need a new one. The lake is like the palm of some stygian giant's hand, cupping her, offering shelter. Her heart pounds with both exertion and the adrenaline of being found out. This is no grave trespass, but it _is_ improper, risky, and the sort of pointless rebellion not expected of her. Carefully parameterized, the world of all political acolytes, and she is typically respectful of these restrictions. Others are less so and have their own methods of renegade expression- some more petty than others. She herself is not actively disliked, but she is teased. There's a separateness to her and, anyway, the rigorous nature of the program engenders rivalries. Her peers think her overly studious, and rather passionless._

 _With a gusty sigh, she turns to answer the summons and pay the piper for her tune._

 _"Here!" she says loudly, to stop the monotonous chant. "I'm coming!"_

 _"Aiyah!" cries the figure on the elaborate, colonnaded pier. It holds a glow lamp aloft, which jounces in agitation. "You get up here, young lady!" And then, in direct contradiction, "Child, child- come in now! You'll catch your death!" The woman- her mother? or one of a multitude of aunts?- has a robe in hand, but that hand is also on her hip in the universal attitude which demands explanation. "Of all the foolish notions, Pa-")_

The name is lost again, slipping through her fingers, washed away by the rustling of the night breeze in long branches. Which, of course, is no breeze at all- just his breathing as he leans over her, the respirator on its eternal cycle of going nowhere. It's hard to tell, but it seems he tips his head just slightly, as if to indicate curiosity.

 _('Come in, child, you'll catch your death!')_

"Oh no," she thinks, with the perfect logic of one trapped in living and irrational dreaming. "Death has caught **me**."

Frowning in concentration, she mentally grasps for the lost thread despite the fact she knows it will elude her. The expression is something her companion mistakes for discomfort. There is none, now; there are dark waves of dreams and white waves of anesthesia, and she is firmly up to her hips in the latter. Weakly motioning away his query, she feels the memory close in on itself, a flower with iron spines. She is left only with more conviction for an association already made: 'phaa', like the snowy white flowers left in her hair. But it can also mean 'snow' itself, or 'victory', or several more obscure concepts, depending on the symbol. Her brain won't quite make that last connection, the point of the triangle between sight and sound, and pronunciation can change in compound words.

"You remembered something." It is not a question.

Now it is her turn to look at him in askance, though the gesture is fairly useless. She nods wearily, letting that nod become a rueful shake of her head. Nothing concrete, she bids him understand.

"Your impatience is understandable," he continues, "but you must not attempt to force recollection."

At that, she arcs an eyebrow. He seems, at times, uncannily aware of her emotions, and she is sure enough of her training (whatever _that_ is) remains that her own expression would not be so unguarded.

( _With this certitude comes the sensation of heavy powder on her cheeks, wax upon lips that forces careful articulation, even if it is no longer truly present._

 _"It is the obligation of any politician to be inscrutable." Said with a secretive smile, allowing the laughter to show in her eyes._

 _The answering grin is very boyish, though the memory refuses to focus on the face. "I guess I'm just lucky you don't play sabacc."_ )

Her skin prickles to gooseflesh, as if acknowledging the presence of a ghost. If he- the 'he' of her murky remembrances and not of the present- were dead, though, wouldn't she know it somehow? An embarrassingly romantic notion, but she cannot deny she has felt his closeness more than once in her short new existence. Very near, his name seeming at times even more obvious than her own. And just as

( _forbidden_ )

unreachable. Perhaps it is only the weight of his prayers, if he is alive somewhere in the galaxy and thinking of her as she is thinking of him.

"Yes," says her present, towering companion. Inwardly, she startles, releasing a shaky breath only after he adds, "You _did_ remember something." He is only confirming his own thought aloud, not reading hers. She cannot be blamed, surely, for crediting her carven host with such powers. Moreover, there is a mystical leaning in her heart- she knows that much, and finds it oddly embarrassing. Practicality seems far more attractive, which means it is either a secret she keeps about herself, some sort of cultural influence, or both.

Her expression must have taken on more skepticism, perhaps even a faint haughtiness while she's been upbraiding herself, for he speaks again, though he does not seem offended.

"'Impatience' was a poor choice of words," he says, almost as if gallantly correcting himself. And yet, after several beats, "Perhaps."

The ensuring silence widens to include her entire being, such is her disbelief. Is he... teasing her? Unfathomable, impossible. Still, there is something in her which cannot help but respond.

Assuming a look of theatrical, partial mollification, she lowers her eyes briefly as though considering the pardon of a slight. Looking back up, she tries to gauge his reaction, seeing only faint blurs of herself in the opaque orbs of his helmet. She is grateful for the lack of clarity, in that instance. He draws a step closer, almost reluctantly. When not performing a function, he seems to favor standing fairly near, but with a buffer of distance that places him still several arm lengths away. He stands always as if at parade rest; she has yet to see him sit.

There is no direct response to her little bout of play-acting- but, indeed, what can he do? In a way, he shares her impaired ability to communicate. Though he maintains assurances that her own situation is temporary (and she has no reason to disbelieve this), his own burden is weightier, and casts her frustration in a more proportionate light. Perhaps he is used to it; perhaps the armor is the mark of some warrior caste, or a necessity to move about outside his natural environment. There are many species- humanoid or otherwise- who require such assistance. He may never have relied on body language, inflection, or facial expression at all.

Never the less, the comparison inspires commiseration in her own being. Not pity, for he is a creature that negates the very concept, swallowing it as a black hole swallows light. Leaving no trace at all. At any rate, she does not really believe pity is ever really an appropriate response to suffering- it doesn't accomplish anything. Too often, it is diluted by unconscious condescension, eclipsing true compassion for the receiving party and preventing any chance of material assistance. One must be able to relate, to _empathize_ , while still respecting the integrity and personhood of the other being. After all, only the random operations of circumstance have caused them to experience misfortune, which could easily have befallen you instead.

( _"I can't believe there is still slavery in the galaxy. The Republic's anti-slavery laws..." How foolish and naive she sounds- perhaps appropriate to the disguise she has adopted, but the response itself is actually shamefully earnest. Particularly in the face of such proof; the boy's innocently gruesome illustration of the consequences, the mother's tired eyes._

 _"There Republic doesn't exist out here," the older woman tells her, gently enough. "We must survive on our own."_ )

Presently, she tries on a little smile, despite the dark nature of her thoughts. He wants him to understand at least that she, too, is being playful. If that's what this is. It seems so wildly inappropriate, though she can't quite come up with any other interpretation. Also, his unwitting affirmative puts her in mind of another aphorism, bits of wisdom masquerading as superstition, or vice versa. ' _There is no such thing as a rhetorical question- someone, somewhere, always answers you._ '

"Rest is imperative for the time being," he tells her again. She's lost track of how many times. His vocoder clearly does not allow for much fine volume modulation, but it seems to her that his words are quieter. Not softer- that is likely impossible. Reluctance taints what follows; the tones of a priest puzzling over card or rolled bones when the portents do not match the future he has already foretold. "I fear your symptoms may worsen before they truly improve."

She nods her understanding, face honestly reflecting the lack of fear within. Foregoing more pain would be ideal, but the notion of physical torture seems to pale in the shadow of trials that have already left their mark, if not their memory, on her.  
And the greatest fear of all, of the unknown- which, at this point, is everything.

His hand lifts, hovers. His is close enough to touch her, should he choose. She turns her own palm up, the one closest to him, to indicate she is not unreceptive, but he only lets the arm hang again at his side. The aborted motion, a manifestation of want, is almost more palpable than the touch itself would have been. In the next moment, he whirls to leave, and the monitors actually rattle in his wake, though his footfalls are silent and the equipment appears well-secured. He is very abrupt in his comings and goings. Dramatic, too, though its unlikely he can help that last one. Whole rooms must cascade into silence upon his entry; heads turning, startled- and then assessing- gazes undisguised. The image evokes a coalescence of feeling in her throat; commiseration, understanding. She knows the multi-eyed regard of a crowd is not to be underestimated.

Pondering this- her relationship to audiences, her firmly formed philosophies- occupies her for some time, mostly for want of anything better to do. The project of getting up on her elbows to view the room will have to wait. Lethargy seems to draw her, as if in a little

( _coffin_ )

boat down a pale river. She sleeps, but shallowly. In a way, it is as if she wanders through some ancient and unwelcoming citadel, holding up a torch to examine half-rotted paintings and mosaics damaged by inhospitable climes. The representations are blurred, prone to guesswork and possibly not truly related to her. Is this some domestic animal she once encountered, or only a fantastic beast from some holoproj play? Is this red-robed woman, folds of painted silk faded to rust, ululating in victory or marking defeat with a scream? Expressions chip and fade away, meanings of words and symbols change. Do the wings on this queen's statue denote only her importance, or has the artist rendered her as an ang-

( _He has been watching her curiously from the moment she entered the shop, eyes vivid over grease-stained cheeks. Not gawping at the outlander, as some of the children did in the dusty street, but studying with a solemn consideration that is actually rather unnerving.  
Finally, he asks, "Are you an -"_)

'No!', she thinks with a ferocity that almost frightens her. 'I forbid you from returning ahead of so many other, vital things!' The anger is a hearty weed, rooted in sorrow and an aching sense of betrayal. She feels oddly guilty, still, for turning the strange half-glimpsed boy-child away, and _that_ is not fair.

And that third, the unseen being in the interludes between herself and her mysterious patron? He too seems willing to present himself in sleep, as he refuses to do in waking life. A part of her wants so desperately to believe in him, despite

 _('I don't know you anymore... you're breaking my heart!')_

what feels like an amputation of faith. Prudence ensures she keeps him at arms length too. Are he and the grave, blue-eyed boy-child the same? If so, then they are both dangerous, in different ways.

Instead of heeding either phantom, she turns her attention to a stream of still images: a shimmering city metastasized to the size of a planet, a great orchard in which unmoving blurs of children play. A more stately capital- ancient, organic, ringed by waterfalls- whose streets have been polluted by droids that seem mere stick-figures, a child's rendering of scarecrows. There is beautiful landscape of lakes, and the North where ambitious cupolas and spires trail snow as though they are ships at sea. A mirage of the boy again, more oblique this time, against a dusty sky whose horizon is dark with the storm moving as though to ride them all down.

Eventually, her slumbering mind does play out moving scenarios- or just one. It begins merely as the cliche

 _(and how does she _know_ it's a cliche?)_

depiction of a spirit hovering outside its physical form. She stands, clad in the more ubiquitous white tunic of medical facilities, shivering and barefoot by the monitors. Her body lies abandoned on the bed- but neatly so, like an expensive garment conscientiously folded. She approaches, since her subconscious gives her no choice, and even as fear rakes red claws along her innards she knows it is not real because the woman on the bed has no face. Somewhere, in the wide universe beyond the little room and its adjacent gray hall, a baby begins to cry. Loudly, inconsolably; a howl of plaintive exhaustion that begs for solace even if it does not know what that solace might be.

Apparently, she cannot even dream creatively, there exists so little clear raw material in her mind.

( _That's not it. That's not it and you know it._ )

She surfaces not because of pain this time (though that is very much in evidence), but rather due to very foreign sensations in her chest and abdomen. Her breasts tingle fiercely, a thousand pins and needles, while a twisting cramp more painful than those of menstruation seizes her middle. At the same time, she feels oddly peaceful, almost ready to slide back into sleep.

( _The texts she reads are often rather clinical- she prefers them to the more biased 'advice' variety- but helpful. Hope, excitement, and trepidation war within her as she revises aspects learned glancingly as a young woman, unable to imagine a time when they would really have anything to do with her. Now an in-depth understanding will help prepare her, though she knows only so much can be garnered from theory rather than experience...)_

And, just like that, the feeling vanishes and realization blooms.

She lifts a hand to her breasts, expecting to feel moisture through the heavy velvet of her robe. When her fingers come away dry, she puts them against her naked flesh and still encounters nothing. There is no longer any warmth or even pain within her; just a horrible sinking sensation in her gut, spreading out like the blast from some powerful missile, her womb the impact crater and her mind clouded with the ash of panic. Despair makes her one solid thing, a twisted mass melted in the wake of destruction, a bronze statue that once hopelessly aped life. Her fear of the nursing droid comes back; the appalling brightness which could only mean separation, the removal of something precious from the shelter of her own body into a galaxy which seems more cruel and menacing by the moment. She had hidden the meaning of that recollection from herself, burying it under the anxiety of her reaction, not wanting to remember.

No matter the selfish tricks of her mind, no matter the devouring fire and whatever her guardian so euphemistically refers to as the 'trauma', her body knows the truth and acted accordingly. Or tried to. She remembers now what she read, remembers the faint conversations of female relatives. Many women instinctively respond to their infant's cries in such a way, biology taking over. But, while she felt the sensation, she remains dry and ungiving as a stone.

There can be no hiding now. Nor would she want to return to ignorance, though she senses more loss waiting in the wings. She asked for a revelation, and the universe always gives with its left, trickster hand.

She knows she is a mother, and that her child is nowhere to be found.

.

* * *

Regarding the warning noted above: Padme experiences the sensation of milk 'let down', a response associated with breastfeeding, but also sometimes triggered in women when they hear their baby crying. Nothing graphic, but her subconscious and body are aware she was recently pregnant, even if resurrection is, ah... non-standard? ^^

As always, I would love to know what you think!


	4. Plague Journals II

NOTES: Not as happy with this as I could be, but I don't want to over-edit it either. So, please enjoy a return to Vader's perspective, in which our favorite Sith Lord competes for gold in the Philosophical Olympic category of Rationalizing Like Hell. Among other things. ;-) As several readers have pointed out, Padme will NOT be happy once she's back on her feet.

Hopefully any flaws I perceive are just me being fussy- I do hope you enjoy!  
Just a head's up: this section does briefly deal with a few medical/biological issues associated with pregnancy. For further details, check the end notes.

* * *

 _ **Afterimage 4/?**  
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory (garnettrees)_

* * *

 _'I have the power to save the ones you love,'_ the deceiver had said, far too recently for his pretense at forgetfulness to be anything but an insult. Snake-tongued seller of wells on a waterless world! How quickly his promises degenerated into ambiguities. _'To cheat Death is a power only one has achieved...'_ Any hope offered fell apart the moment it was grasped in the hands of a man who, appropriately, no longer exists. _'If we work together, I know we can discover the secret...'_

The truth is, Plagueis failed- catastrophically so- before he ever succeeded in his unnatural aims.

Wherein lay the madness of the ancient Sith, then? That he made the blasphemous attempt to begin with, or that- seeing the horror and heartache he raised- he was willing to try again?

Less than a ten-day after resurrecting his wife, Vader lingers by her bedside, watching the barely perceptible rhythm of her breathing and the play of shadow across her face. Only hints of dreaming- none of it well-omened- can be seen through the ice of her sedated repose. When Padme does wake, she is quiet and stoic, miserable in a way discernible only to one who has himself felt the slow poisoning of reality by hallucination. She is in pain, in agony the likes of which he once authored against her and swore to perpetrate no more. Inescapably, physical attrition is turning the tide of this war.  
Turning the tide against _him_.

He stands presently, therefore, on a metaphorical precipice from which all

( _the blood, the vows broken, the screams of children and the searing coals placed each one against his flesh_ )

his great effort and sacrifice might still result in loss.

Vader's problem is not- thank all dark forces, and even neutral ones- that which doomed Plagueis' initial attempt. That peril he has avoided entirely, having benefited from his predecessor's necessary trial and error. He has bested the adversary, taken back that which Death had no right to take or keep. In the tradition of the best Mos Espa grifters, he has robbed the thief. But what that bitch-goddess releases with one arthritic hand, she grabs back coyly with the other.

Unlike Plagueis, there will be nothing left for Vader if Padme is lost. No pale reflection of a true image to settle for as second best. He has cast aside name, history, and- most frivolous of all- the identity of his master, all for this. In a Lightless universe (he cares not one jot for the more positive component of the Force; what concerns him is another source of illumination altogether), only the cold pursuit of power would remain. The vacuum in which fire cannot burn.

( _'For what,' asks a small boy who never existed, erased from history by hills of magma heavier and more damning than the Dune Sea, '_what_ good is power, if there is no one to protect?'_ )

His wife's case is not precisely analogous to the galaxy's single previous example of successful resurrection, either- something Vader would do well to remember. After all, Darth Plagueis' second 'subject' had only been dead a few days though, conversely, preserved with medical resources far more slim than his erstwhile successor has access to. As for that other, the first and most precious being whom the sorcerer had, in his haste to rescue, ultimately failed...  
No. No, Vader will not think of it.

Nor will he think of aught but bringing Padme through this latest of many trials, of the larger subterfuge by which he means to shield her so she may strengthen and recover. There is more arrayed against him than mere violation of natural law. He knows quite well the Palpatine's malign, rummy eye is upon him. It is ever so, given the fate of all Sith apprentices to either usurp their master or die. After so much faithful time on Coruscant by ( _her_ ) the Emperor's side, his absence is a notable thing. His supposed errands- wholly but convincingly invented- are of a brief duration, and his Master will have noticed the brief but profound upheaval in the matrix of the universe, besides. Even the dullest potential will have sensed it, if any are left to do so. The Sidious can no doubt see the tear- nothing can be done about that. What is paramount now is that he cannot presently see (and therefore must be **kept** from seeing) that it is Padme who has emerged, whole and untainted, in the wake of this disturbance.

Her essence- that spark of opal flame Vader so contrived to snare- remains thankfully undamaged. She is as she has always been: determined, insightful, simultaneously keen of mind and intuition, balancing intellect on the pivot of her hidden heart. She knows her own mind, if not its contents. In those first few days (and even now, through her suffering), she proved to be every atom the woman who so easily drew his natural fealty before the Jedi had even been a possibility. It is her hand that rests against the pathetic remnants of his organic being; her eyes which, though fearful, give the beast-automaton he has become just enough grace to truly earn her trust. The part of her which has always known him responds even now, and the searching, bemused smiles she once sent him covertly have made their reappearance. In time- that is, the Time Before, another man's ancient history- she gradually came to understand much of his heart and mind. It was his initial childish ardor that had perplexed her somewhat and, lacking any way to articulate that old certainty to her, he swiftly allowed it to be overshadowed by the passion of a man.

No longer that child or that man, he cannot reveal himself to her. At present, such transparency would have no meaning. Any details of her life he shared with her would be like second-hand breath- rodded of vitality, and quite possibly poisonous. Her history would seem only a rumor, tragic anecdote, or only a story concocted by finger-waving grandames.

The time for her to know who has wrested her from Death is only the most distant notion, and if that metaphor seems to imply she is only a possession,

 _('Jealousy, fear, possession- of the Dark Side, are they.')_

that is not his intent. One can no more say Padme has ever lacked will than one could claim the suns lack heat. She is merely trapped _in potentia_. Without knowledge, and the feeling behind it, one cannot give allegiance.

 _(Surely she would not- she _could not_- pit herself against him in the matter of her own existence?)_

Having been in part the hand

 _(which cast its ghostly counterpart to crush and stifle the throat he'd once so devotedly kissed)_

that helped prematurely end her life, Vader does not quite have the hubris to use the term 'rescue' in regards to her resurrection. She might think him a torturer if she knew, for her eyes beseech him when obscuring clouds of pain lift enough that she is conscious. Her gaze implies that she is at his mercy, begging that he end her torment somehow. She treads agony as she once did the waters of Naboo. No longer laughingly, daring him to follow and coaxing him to swim. Instead she is tiring, disappearing beneath the waves more often, and for intervals of increasing length. He fears he is left trying to aid her with a double-edged sword. Hilt-less, he holds it out to her, but there is no way she can grasp it without maiming her hands.

 _('Hate has one edge, love has two.')_

No Jedi saying, that- the Temple had no aphorisms about love, though Force knew they had maxims to spare otherwise. It is Padme's voice, of course; Padme reading from some weathered tome, stroking his hair with her free hand, calming nerves exhausted but too restless to sleep. Her presence has always been soothing, just as his dreams have ever been uneasy things in one way or another. Now, poured into this suit like charred fragments into an urn, he does not truly sleep at all. His mind rests, as all sentient beings require, but he cannot reach the deepest levels- that which the medi-droids call 'delta-wave'- for more than a handful of minutes at a time.  
They say such deprivation can cause madness. For him, it is a relief.

 _('Dreams pass, in time...'_

 _'Anakin, no!'_

 _'You die in childbirth.')_

Fool of a boy he had been, to heed Obiwan's trite advice when his mother's life might have been saved. The Force echoes as it organizes events towards their potential conclusions and so, while the future is always in motion, the number of permutations is finite. Vader does not believe in 'destiny', but even he cannot deny the gravity which seems to hold certain inescapable occurrences in place. The moment Padme died, it became incontrovertible that she would again live. He will set worlds turning at a brush of her fingertips, lay whole star systems at her feat. Still, he cannot bring back the child she so anticipated, though he knows- is resentfully certain- she would summon the sheer determination to live for _it_.

' _But_ _ **I**_ _am here_ ,' he thinks during the long static of respirator cycles. ' _You would not take my hand before, but take it now. I will answer to that other name one last time, if you will only look and see that the fire could not burn away the part of myself I pledged to you._ '

She would recoil- she **would**. He has seen her endeavor to hide the instinctive flinch his appearance and aura of darkness summon. The obfuscations are necessary and, _(if)_ as she lives, they will likely grow into outright lies. There's a certain freedom in that- in razing to the ground all that came before.

Never mind the Jedi and their dross about the shackles of deception. Vader knows the Truth can be a cage as well.  
After all, he's living in one.

"The pride of the Jedi," Emperor Palpatine often remarks to his apprentice, "was their undoing."

Enjoying, no doubt, the double meaning hidden therein; that the child Qui Gon had championed as the Chosen One, had rescued from the far and dusty corner of the universe, became the mechanism for their destruction. Vader knows that, despite Master Jinn's endorsements, he was never the pride of the Temple. His Sith mentor is well aware of this too, but Sidious is a creature willing to make factual sacrifices for historical aesthetics. The newly released twelve-volume chronicle of 'The Savage Pre-Imperial Centuries' is proof enough of that.

It is somewhat cheering that Palpatine's sense of the dramatic has sown the seeds for his own undoing.

When his new Master first gifts Vader with the world of Vjun, his surprise is so great he has no hope of hiding it. He must grovel, then,

 _(a distasteful task, but an art every slave must effect with an apparent sincerity almost as strong as their duplicity)_

and confess that a creature of such lowly birth and so few possessions would, of course, experience shock and disbelief when presented with so generous a gift. Privately, he thinks back to the evening in Palpatine's personal box, when the then-Chancellor first spoke to him of Plagueis. That night the entertainment fare had been Mon Calamari water ballet, but the Emperor has a marked taste for any form of 'refined' theatrics. Opera, shadow theater, silk-mask pantomime, the swaying melodies of Twi'lek courtesans, and the polyvalent organ fugues of the nearly extinct Ortolan- Sheev Palpatine is a connoisseur of them all. Such entertainment seems to be one of his few indulgences, aside from political manipulation and the occasional active participation in the lengthy torture of some underling or another. 'It is important to continue getting one's hands dirty, now and again.' (To say nothing of what happened to the Corellian soprano who sang 'Dusk of a Thousand Suns' ever-so-slightly off key.) What, indeed, can keep the most powerful man in the galaxy sufficiently occupied? The Emperor adores irony; he loves to impart loathsome knowledge, witness intimate betrayals, and set in motion dark curses disguised as gifts.  
When money and political power have been achieved, only the elemental and ephemeral prize of manipulation retains luster.

There is only one true remaining structure on Vjun, and the name of this crumbling castle ruin pricks a sense of stillness under Vader's armor when first uttered in his presence. Bast, the name of the anachronistic fortress is _Bast_. According to the small lingering population of miserable natives, the hulking structure has always been called so- from time out of mind. The world itself is nothing but poison now, with pools of liquid methane and an atmosphere possessing just enough oxygen to deliver a stealthy collection of fatal contaminants to any soul foolish enough to accept it at face value. The dwindling communities take shelter in pressurized tunnels beneath the slag-ore hills, relying on aging life-support, maintaining the crumbling edifice like serfs, and telling stories of when their world was green and vibrant. Naboo, riddled with atmosphere-shredding bombs and seeded with bio-weapons, will not doubt be very similar in a few hundred years.

Palpatine lets it be known that the aesthetic irony amuses him- a poisoned, breathless world for his twisted, laboriously breathing right hand. Yet, from the moment the word 'Bast' becomes associated with the gifted planet, Vader begins to suspect the old bastard's private mirth may stem from a far deeper source. This second pseudo-life (the Force?) has granted Vader several strange little boons in its short span, and here is a lock for the seemingly innocuous key he found amidst the Jedi archives. A name, a name; what's in a name? Something, clearly, for the Emperor says only 'the fortress', 'the castle', and- with a hint of mockery- 'your home'. Never once does he give the title, though all the locals know it and it is clearly listed on the deed.

 _'Speak not of devils,'_ a young slave-boy's mother once whispered, _'for they hear quite clearly when you call their name.'_

As revelations go, it is so slight as to be almost beneath consideration. Nothing of any former owner remains in the castle, for Palpatine is no fool. Vader himself brings nothing save a few droids and the hyperbaric chamber necessary for his health. It is a duty visit, an inspection. Leaving _her_ with only automated guardians and security systems on what is essentially the Emperor's planet is difficult to bear, but to do otherwise would garner uncomfortable scrutiny. Yet the name of the crumbling edifice must have meaning, aligning as it does with too many other 'coincidental' facts. There is the single mention of the out-cast Jedi's daughter, the presence of Vjun within the regions of space decimated by plague, the eponymous title taken up by the Sith Lord, and Palpatine's tacit admission that the planet had been his long before Imperial takeover. It is less a matter of property (carefully hidden in various shell companies, since Sidious knew exactly what sort of resources a 'senator'- and later, Chancellor- should have) than it is a trophy. Vader's new Master clearly led many lives before he clad himself in the identity of Sheev Palpatine, and old habits are hard to break. Not unexpectedly, the preliminary search of the edifice and surrounding environs proves fruitless, as do the second and the third. The Sith apprentice visits between campaigns; brief sojourns, since duty often requires he be at  
( _her_ )  
his master's side.

In this manner, his consignment to purgatory reaches a Galactic standard year. A year since he last stood or breathed freely, since _she_ breathed her last. The stasis pod will not hold indefinitely- such is beyond even the most advanced of current medical technology- especially given that, in this case, it was employed without a spark of life remaining. The... body

 _('Is only a shell,' Ki-Adi-Mundi frequently intoned, 'your soul, the animating fire of the Force, is independent of this material structure.')_

will last another twelve months, perhaps fifteen. Time, the illegitimate and incestuous brother to the Death-Bitch of Tatooine, is hot on Vader's heels. It seems Windu was right, and the two really are the same thing- or else, conjoined twins.

Despite the obvious metaphysical aspect of life among the Jedi, neither Vader nor the man he was have ever been philosophical creatures. His sense of the spiritual is that of the rustic, the nomad; superstition, vague feeling, and the overall conviction that religion and everything associated with it have no real place in the practical, day-to-day operations of the universe. If the gods are cruel, what of it? To eke out an existence on a planet so antithetical to life, one must accept that as a given and move on. Let perfunctory abasements be made before any idol and then forgotten before one even rises from the sand for, if the beings they represent do chance to exist, who knows what their capricious whims might be? Best not to dwell on such things.

As a Jedi, Vader respected the Wookies, and he continues to do so though their species exists now only in the tenuous diaspora of the enslaved. Brave warriors, ruthless but honor-bound, whose self-reliance precluded religious specificity. As those hirsute beings had their mighty yet inconstant forest spirits and the Mon Calamari their inarticulate notions of intelligent god-waves, so too did the sparse philosophy of Tatooine align with its environment until it became no more remarkable to its believers than a rock or a rhonto. This rendered Qui Gon's more occult arguments before the Council rather meaningless to the slave boy he'd rescued, and no amount of tutelage, emphasis, or mediation ever convinced Anakin Skywalker to truly value the esoteric side of the Force. In his heart of hearts, he has always been a mechanic. Blue-prints, gears, and fuel concern him- _function_ , followed by form improving said. As long as the machine runs, has purpose, there need be no question as to _why_ it was built.

This is an outlook the Dark Side responds to eagerly as it twines about him, readily summoned and almost ecstatically employed. The finer details and strategic foresights which once escaped him are elusive no longer, and the impact of his will has multiplied ten-fold. He is now the Force-wielder (though certainly not the Jedi) he always felt he should have been. Perhaps responding to this ardent symbiosis

 _('Parasitism', scolds the voice of Kenobi, who presents his former apprentice with the opposite problem of not _staying dead_)_

it is the Dark Side itself that gifts its newest son with the next existential key. One might chalk it up to coincidence, or larger patterns of the Force; in truth, it matters not. Padme would call it a 'confluence of events', a natural intersection of lives and circumstance which- while one might never know if they would come to good or ill- are simply meant to be.  
Having been both the victim and beneficiary of such, Vader cannot wholly discount this.

On the edge of the Rishi Maze, skirting that unknown void which lies beyond the Outer Rim, there are many worlds which have no name. Perhaps some once had claim to titles, the endowment of designation. If so, their people have gone or died off, or committed martial suicide. No stretch of the imagination is required to summon that sort of history for many of these planets and moons, whose thinning atmospheres or tumultuous tectonic activity render their landscapes in nightmare smudges of ebony and soot. Others are acidic wastelands, cursed with toxic rains, merciless winds, or rivers of liquid methane. They are ruined worlds, the ancient predecessors of Vjun and now Naboo- the later of which the Emperor has pumped full of chemical putrescences that will render her completely uninhabitable within the decade. There is little in this out-dated quadrant of space to concern the great Sith Lord or his apprentice. Kumino no longer retains its pivotal importance, though the planet still churns out fodder for stormtroopers at fairly regular intervals. No longer masters of cloning with wares up for sale, they are only dutiful stewards of a great machine which practically runs itself. Already tenuous numbers dwindled by deliberate extermination, the remnants of the gentle and starry-eyed race will continue manufacturing their final model until they- and the need for their services- at last become extinct.

Vader has considered the watery world beneath notice from the very beginning of his quest, though many would have been tempted by Kumino trade. Blasphemer and idolator that he is, he retained even in his most acute grief sensibilities which still demanded adherence to the ultimate taboo. He wanted no blank slate or simulacra, could not even tolerate its contemplation.  
No. He knew from the start that She must be retrieved from dispersion in the Light he now shuns, and which never deserved her anyway. What would be found must rise from the ashes of what had been lost. There was never any other choice, treacherous though the path might be.

And here it lies spread before him, a piece of mortality's puzzle box that falls into his lap just as the clock begins to tremulously wind down. A living world on the edge of Imperial Civilization; cobalt blue with massive seas, tenanted by only slightly less cyclopean beasts. White chalk cliffs cluster together, pitifully guarding the remaining landmass, themselves weathered with clinging succulents. Deep, unlighted forests shelter behind them, the only denizens of the inland being the insidious fungi, carrion eaters, and gleaming carnivorous plants of which they are composed. The oceans churn with towering organisms rendered murderous by sheer size, and barely a standard klick of remaining surface fails to crawl with life. Stand still too long and even the unhealthy vegetation becomes a threat.

It is to this twisted sphere of life that Vader tracks- and eliminates- two of the last five Jedi unaccounted for in the Galaxy. Effectively dead since Palpatine enacted Order 66, the Jedi still have a lengthy history and a place in legend. Sidious knows it is not enough to slice the head from the body of such a broad and well-founded organization. He would do well amongst the Sand People, if his fastidiousness could tolerate such lowly beings, for the villains of Vader's home world have their own cardinal rule. Known to exploit those few fertile females unfortunate enough to be captured, they never the less put to the sword any male issue from these forced unions, to say nothing of the outlander man-flesh they consume for its mystic properties. 'Let none rise to seek vengeance in the name of his father, or in the name of his mother's father; leave no seed fall by the wayside, unless you reap your own blood without complaint.' (And who could doubt the truth of it, when a mother's son _had_ run the sands red with fury that cauterized more profoundly even than his weapon?) On most days, Vader finds enough credulity within himself to believe- to _will_ \- Kenobi dead. The life of Yoda, even in the seemingly secure days of the Order, has long been guttering on its wick. Time will do the work the lightsaber is forbade, though he is not above hoping the task might still fall to him. The Emperor has decreed that no living expression of the Light may remain, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant the talent. He has even instituted subtle testing during primary education, to identify and subtly 'remove' the threat of Force-sensitives born after the purge.

Thus the current fugitives whose scent the apprentice follows are padawans of later age and unremarkable gifts. Two of them, no doubt told to run as their masters embraced off-world martyrdom for the sake of buying time. That they've managed to last this long is a miracle in and of itself. They have even less skill for concealment and espionage than they do in martial applications of the Force. Reliance on their familiar and tell-tale weapons has prevented them from truly taking advantage of the lawless outworlds. Fear of the Empire extends light-years beyond its infrastructure, and many would sell the hides of their own kin in these desperate days.

With these two pathetic anachronisms are three children, sensitives with no training, all of them holed up in a miserable, bizarre bunker which may once have been the home of smugglers. The single squadron of stormtroopers the Sith brings with him is laughably excessive, and the lone flagship in orbit merely a means of transportation. Like all Star Destroyers, it is equipped with space-to-surface lasers and bombardment drones, but there is no need to burn the entire engine when only a gear or two must be plucked. Let the Emperor gaze on diagrams with gleeful avarice while he plots to destroy entire planets with a single ray of heat and fission- accomplishing such a feat has never seemed particularly impressive to Vader. Behind the scientific and technological rigor involved, what does it _prove_? One can hardly go about destroying every planet which rebells or merely serves as a useful example. With a high card like that, you can end up backing yourself into a corner rather quickly. Unless you're content with ruling the astroid-pocked ruins of a galaxy, that is.

The ruins here, on this world, are somewhat challenging to find. At least there's that- some evidence of strategic competence at last. The bunker may not, after all, have been the home of smugglers. Once found, application of more detailed ground-penetrating radar reveals its bones spread deep underground, a labyrinth of empty arteries which more likely served as some sort of military base before the planet was abandoned. The maze works just as well _for_ Vader as it does against him, and the undesirables die, one by one. Only the last- a female whose face is likely made familiar only by the look of despairing horror- requires any real effort. She falls like all the rest, but more admirably; she does not spit or beg.

Once this task is discharged, only three public enemies will remain. One is an old archive cleric rumored to have been spotted on Malestare. Like Yoda, age and ill health may kill her before Vader can be bothered. The old Master himself, along with the traitorous Kenobi, remain unaccounted for. Even the Emperor cannot sense the ripples of their presence in the now ink-black pool of the Force, though the spavined dictator would never make such an admission aloud. As such, even intimating their continued existence is a heresy the Palpatine will not stand. Both the Sidious and his new apprentice stand ready and wary, each seeking vengeance for reasons the other assumes they understand. The tricks, the obfuscations, the leveraging of what is precious for their own petty ends... both surviving Jedi have much to answer for. Vader holds in reserve very particular rage to be wielded against Kenobi, and not only for the ruins of the healthy body he himself must now haunt. His former master became a pilferer of corpses, it seems, having turned Padme's... shell... over the Naboo after destroying the remains of her stillborn child. The hospital-ship records- and the methodical torture of Bail Organa-revealed the latter crime, though it seems the Naboo intended to give the impression their beloved queen would be interred still with child. It is an inconsistency which Vader finds himself turning over from time to time, aware only of the place where two supposedly compatible pieces do not fit end-to-end. Odd, but hardly the basis for a conspiracy theory. Just one more ruse, of which the Naboo were notoriously so fond. Many are deceivers, and Vader is well content his new life affords him the redemptive honesty of direct aggression. Organa broke eventually, still obviously ignorant of the child's full parentage, and was returned to his wife and their own squalling infant at the Emperor's sufferance. The Jedi perpetrator faded, having set out with no flight-plan and no nav computer to be traced.

Vader cannot expect to sense his former Master if the Emperor cannot and, on days when his certitude in Obiwan's death is not quite satisfying enough, tells himself he need only wait for the inevitable mistake. What he _can_ sense now, standing on this nameless and riotously organic world, is an energy so potent as to be vertiginous. Unlike the other fools, his final quarry did not run further down into the strange shafts of the makeshift hideout. 'A cave is a grave' is actually one of Padme's maxims on strategy, passed down from a professor whose long history included many run-ins with spice smugglers. No, the final female padawan fled into the forest, for all the good it did her, and now lies in three pieces in the glittering blue-black mud. Open now to the malignant, almost vegetable sentience of the surrounding wood, Vader senses something so like a presence that he actually turns to track its motion. No predator or animal of the underbrush has moved on the periphery of his vision, only the faintest tendrils of mist from between the trees. Bark like ebony lacquer, row upon sinuously warped row standing in formation as far as the eye can see. Between and around these leafless sentinels are scattered half-translucent blue foliage, creepers like the pale and desiccated arteries of vampires, and jewels of fungi whose vivid color boldly attests their toxicity. Nothing, not even the sparse and skeletal flower buds, deigns to even nod in the chill breeze.

In the next moment, it is as though a veil has been lifted- momentous, but also thin and utterly inconsequential. The shift reveals a scene so radically altered that it at first seems exactly the same. It is the malignancy- _power_ that palpitates like living flesh- now unvarnished in every root, rotting leaf, and fall of shadow, that renders the forest anew. He recognizes it immediately in this state, would have known instantly what it was even if he had not possessed the nomenclature. For the first time in almost a decade, Qui Gon's voice swims from the stagnant pools of Anakin's memory and- more exceptional still- is acknowledged by Vader.

 _'A vergence,'_ the echo whispers. _'A vergence in the Force.'_

Standing amidst the slain refuse of would-be Jedi, something within the Sith stills in recognition and then rallies. For just a moment, the merciless clock at his back- a harsher whip hand than Palpatine could ever hope to be- marks time more quietly. Thoughtfully, the Sith bends to more closely observe the severed hand and forearm of the fugitive padawan, visually examining it with the sharp interest born of new perspective. All around he can sense a stirring, the magnetic power cooling flesh holds over those with a keen instinct for the newly dead. Some of this interest comes from lower lifeforms- insects, carrion reptiles like _mynoks_ \- but a large portion comes _from the forest itself_. The vagaries of this collective consciousness are a conduit for an entity still more obscure. A vergence can be a person, yes. It was once suggested he might be one himself and, if Jinn was right about anything, it was only that the miserable slave boy was Chosen. No one had ever really bothered to consider what he had been chosen _for_. But a vergence can also be an object (and there are legends of crystals that function in just that fashion)... or a place.

Turning his attention once more to the remains of the fallen padawan, Vader witnesses a remarkable thing. The severed arm and torso of his unworthy adversary are cool and still, white mold already blooming eagerly on the extremities, like flakes of snow. Yet there is also a faint luminescence curling upwards from the corpse, twining into strange patterns not dissimilar to those woven by the pipes of Mos Espa's weed-dens. It has a greenish-blue cast, very pale but also painful to look at, as if the eye is being assaulted by more than just light.

More than light... _life_.

Every midichlorian in the girl-warrior's body is dying, released by the cellular decay that begins as blood settles and the bowels release. This place is so primed to consume anything- _everything_ \- that the fleeing energy of the Force is actually visible! The concept is not an entirely new one; padawan learners were encouraged to develop an awareness of the aura surrounding any strangers they encountered. Yet even the most adroit rarely moved beyond 'feeling', more the vibration of a dowsing rod than any actual sight. This new phenomenon gives Vader pause, but a cycle through each of the spectrums available to his lenses reveals that _something_ is happening. The readings on most are marginal, so strange or isolated that interpretation is useless, and only that setting analogous to human sight registers an actual image.

Undeniable, all the same. Though vergences do not necessarily have allegiances, this one clearly does. Like the Dark Side as a whole, it is the ultimate parasite, feeding off anything- including itself. Small wonder the smuggler's base- if that's what it was- is abandoned. Given enough exposure, even a nonsensitive would be vulnerable to the capricious energies present: insidious whisperings in the brain, shadows lingering behind the eye, dreams to make the blood run cold. Indeed, had the Sith Lord not come to dispense with the fugitive brats, they almost certainly would have run mad and eventually destroyed themselves. Such happy intuition they must have thought themselves to have, when they heard the vergence calling to them! A sarlaac in its pit, ancient and well-practiced. It recognized their loyalty to the Light and so knew them to be prey.

As the pounding of pulse and adrenaline from battle ebb away, Vader feels it recognize him too. An heir of perfect darkness, opposition to Light so absolute that even the twin suns of his home world and the expectations of a Chosen One could not burn it away. Alone with his kill, Darth Vader bows his head ever-so-slightly, a diffuse but respectful sort of greeting.

 _'Yes,'_ the mephitic forest whispers to him. In a language below language, in the lexicon of his childhood nightmares; _'Break, raze, ruin; perpetuate the self by this destruction.'_

The ghostly Force-light is gone now. Dark aerial beings with damp, loathsome fur swoop down from the warped trees, feasting with mouths- two of them, ringed with innumerable teeth- on either end of their snake-like forms. Small bush-dwellers scuttle forth from beneath the shadows and piles of rotting leaves, squealing voraciously and trying to gnaw the tails of their flying competitors even as they feed.

 _'I know the blasphemy that rots yours heart, my son.'_

It is not a real voice, Vader knows, and it never will be. Just as visions deal in treacherous imagery and symbol, so too does the mind translate the metaphysical into some sense the mundane can grasp. He is talking to himself. There is voice or image here that he has not brought with him.  
As to what might employ those things in order to make itself understood...

The Sith remains receptive but wary, 'listening' with all the terrible concentration learned from too much wakefulness and a world seen only through the vizor's monochrome lens.

 _'Soon.'_

He can almost see her lithesome form, lush in dark brocade, aglow from the firelight and his own young man's passion. The shape of her is echoed in every slick, obsidian tree. So too is the final demise which awaits her, pacing restlessly outside the stasis pod as he will not allow himself to do. Death in the Nubian guise, serpentine prince whose kiss will corrode the remains of her shell to dust. Within the palsied trees, hints of her skeleton flicker- whiter than sand washed by time, the skulls perpetually grinning and insane. By trick of branch and shadow, she is showcased in every stage of decay.

Lashing out in anger, Vader bends these mockeries with the Force of a sandstorm's wind. There is fear in him, too, but anger has ever been his method of expressing any terror- an acid that swallows up weakness without a trace. Lifting his arms to do more purposeful damage, to flatten every chameleon column, he pauses only when he senses his intended victim's grudging respect. Such an appeal to vanity will not stay him long. They are two wary predators, all frothing fangs and heaving sides, essentially staring one another down. It matters not that one is older, more ineffable; the other young and potent.  
In a way, they are evenly matched.

Even a bee can more a rancor. The destruction Vader can wreck is greater even than the lasers of his orbiting Star Destroyer- though he is not very far from wishing to use those as well.

Charily, he is acknowledged. And provided with an answer.

It is not a deal- not some dark bargain exchanging esoteric knowledge for living sacrifices and libations of blood. The death of the padawan has nourished the vergence, true, but it is old- this place where reality thins- and it has the patience of those things which exist almost outside of time. Yet, seeing as it does beyond Vader's range of view (seeing the past and future simultaneously, if the most occulted of Jedi teachings are to be believed), it has little tolerance for 'ignorance' in matters completely obvious to it. The vergence's final attitude towards the encroaching Sith is that of a passing critic for a novice artist in the street. The ancient whose claws adjust the student's grip upon an instrument; the annoyed onlooker turning up the resolution on a holoproj.

Acerbically, it guides the mortal's train of thought in some inexpressible way, and Vader warily allows this.

' _ **Look**_.' Instructing, but also laughing, using Padme's voice and enjoying some cosmic irony only it can appreciate. He remembers a snatch of the poetry she once read to him: _'the moving finger, at the loom, cannot repair that undone too soon'_.

Though it is severed and without life-blood, Vader watches as the padawan's lost hand clenches and unclenches several times, at last folding itself into an unforgiving and impossible fist.

.

.

* * *

NOTES:  
[+] The line of poetry Padme reads is inspired by Omar Khayyam's vastly superior piece:  
 _The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,_  
 _Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit_  
 _Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,_  
 _Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it._  
I always feel weird about mixing classical references in the GFFA, though making my own poor substitutions isn't much better. ^^;

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to read my story, and I would love to know what you think! ;-)


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